Queen and Country Book 2: A Necessary End
by SheWhoScrawls
Summary: The Baker Street team has three members now that Emily Watson is lodging with her half brother and his eccentric flatmate. A letter from North Yorkshire calls the trio to a small mining town where the mine owner's son has gone missing. The scarlet thread of murder is deep and convoluted, and it takes every ounce of mettle for our heroes to unravel its secrets.
1. The Pain of Hell

_A/N: Hello everyone! Welcome to book 2 of my series! If you're here, then you probably enjoyed book 1, **Proof of Concept.** If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you go do so before reading any further here, and don't forget to leave your comments! _

_This book (and a lot of the ones further into the series) carries a slight warning for self harm, beginning in this chapter. I think that's the only warning there is to worry about._

 _So, this brings me to the end of what I have to say, other than please review and leave comments and suggestions for future books. Enjoy! - Ell_

* * *

 _A Necessary End  
_

 _"Of all the wonders that I have heard,_

 _It seems to me most strange that men should fear,_

 _Seeing death, a necessary end,_

 _Will come when it will come."_

 _\- William Shakespeare, Julius Caeser, Act II Scene 2_

* * *

Chapter 1: The Pain of Hell

" _Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies between the pain of hell and Paradise."_

 _-George William Russell_

* * *

I could see Ariana on the other side of the glass. She was right there. I could see her. Our faces were less than an inch from each other yet we couldn't touch, couldn't hear each other's words. I picked up the chair and smashed the glass. But Ariana disappeared in a pool of blood. She was gone. My sister was gone. I cried out in sheer anguish and collapsed to the ground.

I awoke with a start, my own cries having shaken me from my dream for yet another time. I was in my own dark bedroom. The only window in sight looked out onto the silent and still street below.

A moment later John appeared wearily in my doorway. "Is everything all right, Emily?" he asked, his voice slightly slurred, showing that he was still half asleep. He had likely not even been asleep long, haunted by the memories of the war.

"It's fine," I replied, hoping that the tremors in my voice were not audible through two little words. "Don't bother turning the light on, just go back to bed."

Reluctantly, my brother mumbled a goodnight and left me alone in the dark. For this I was fortunate. I did not want him to see how fragile I was. My hands were shaking uncontrollably and tear streaks ran down my face. I could feel the emptiness inside me. The darkness of the room seemed to press against me from all sides, like ever circling monsters. I shakily got up and turned the gas on, providing a dim light that immediately relieved the feeling. The emptiness, however, was still present. The past month of recovering from my external injuries had done nothing to assuage those I felt internally. I hadn't told anyone. Not Holmes, not John, not even Andrew. I didn't know what they would say. I heard of women being condemned to asylums for experiencing such feelings. I could still function. I could still solve cases. It would appear that nothing was wrong with me, although it was obvious that something was.

I collapsed back onto my bed and could no longer hold back my sobs. I pulled the blankets up to my chin and cried bitterly into my pillow for the remainder of the night.

* * *

The following morning I could barely eat any of the kippers and eggs that Mrs. Hudson had served. I avoided the eyes of my brother and his flat mate and excused myself as early as I could, retreating to my bedroom and closing the door.

Once I was sure that no one would disturb me, I reached underneath my pillow and pulled out the razor I had stolen from John's room two weeks previously. What was I doing? _No, Emily, stop,_ I told myself. But I couldn't. My hands shook and tears streamed down my face. And before I knew it, I had drawn the edge of the razor across the surface of my skin and drops of blood oozed from beneath. It stung. It stung like a bee sting, many of which I had experienced in the countryside around Thorndon Hall when I was a young girl. But somehow, it still felt good. I couldn't explain it. I didn't know why drawing blood suddenly felt so good to me. But it managed to make the emptiness inside me hurt a little less, for a little while, but at the same time worse, a painful reminder of what I'd endured and the secrets that I was still keeping.

I sat on my bed numbly for a moment, staring at the drops of blood on my arm, and then looked around frantically and noticed that I had nothing to wipe the blood off with and I didn't have any bandages to cover it up so as not to soil my dress.

I opened the door of my room and headed for the sitting room. Before I entered, I stood still in the hallway for a moment to ascertain whether or not Holmes and John were still at the breakfast table. They were. I pushed the door open. "John, where's your medical bag?" I asked.

He looked up sharply. "Are you hurt, Emily? What is it?"

"Oh, it's nothing," I said quickly. "I just tripped in my room and scraped my arm on the corner of my desk. Just tell me where you put it and I'll take care of it. I only need to get a small bandage."

"Nonsense, let me look at it." John rose from his seat.

I opened my mouth to object, but he was already pulling out his black bag from under Holmes' chemical table and opening it. He beckoned me over and I couldn't do anything but wordlessly follow, holding my arm gingerly.

"Hold it out," instructed my brother, the familiar firm expression of a physician in his eyes.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I did as instructed; keeping my sleeve lifted so as not to bleed on my dress.

John extracted a small wad of cotton from his bag and used it to dab gently at the drops of blood that glistened on my skin. Then he lifted my arm and inspected the wound. His brow wrinkled as he peered closer. My breath caught in my throat and my heart sped up. Was it not consistent with a scrape from the edge of my desk? Did he somehow know what I had done?

But he said nothing. He merely disinfected the wound and stuck a small bandage over it. "Thank you," I murmured, and left the room again as fast as I could.

Once I was in the hallway, I heard the men's voices and lingered, listening.

"She didn't scrape her arm on her desk, Holmes," said my brother.

Damn it, oh, damn it all, I thought to myself.

"I deduced as much, Watson," replied Holmes. "There was no blood on her sleeve. Surely there would be, unless she was wandering about her room with her sleeves pulled up, which is doubtful on such a blustery October day."

"I looked at that wound, Holmes. Much too clean, and far too precise. Whatever it was, it was certainly not a scrape."

"What could it be from, then?" inquired Holmes.

"I don't know, Holmes, but she lied to us."

I could sense Holmes' piercing gray eyes meeting my brother's. "Are you going to approach her about it?"

I heard John sigh. "Not yet, Holmes. If it's truly a serious matter, I'm sure she'll come to one of us about it."

After this exchange, the two men lapsed into silence and I crept back to my room.

* * *

I spent the rest of the morning curled in the wicker chair with my journal and a copy of Wilkie Collins' _The Moonstone,_ writing and reading and looking out at the desolate and grey appearance of the world outside. Although there weren't any trees by which to judge the strength of the wind, I could see that it was strong. Abandoned newspapers and other pieces of litter blew fiercely around on the street, and I could hear the rattle of the windowpanes as they were shaken by the force of it.

Just before the normal time for luncheon, there was a knock at my door. "Come in," I called.

John opened the door and stood in the doorway. His eyes wandered absently to my desk for a moment, but then he fixed his gaze on me. "Holmes asked me if you would like to come into the sitting room. A letter arrived by post and he'd like to discuss the possibility of a new case."

I rose from my seat, marking my page in the book and following my brother into the sitting room.

Holmes was sitting in his armchair by the fireplace, leaning forward eagerly, with an unlit pipe in his mouth and a piece of thick stationery in his hand. He looked up as John and I entered. "There you are, Emily," he said, his voice perfectly steady, showing no hint of the suspicions toward me that he had shared with my brother. "I have received a letter from North Yorkshire, and the case looks promising, if you should care to hear the particulars."

I nodded and took a seat on a wooden chair that I pulled over from the dining table.

Looking at me out of the corner of his steely eyes from over the top of the letter he had raised to in front of his face, Holmes saw that I was ready and began to read. I leaned forward and rested my chin on my hands to listen, then quickly put my left arm in my lap and relied completely on my right for support when I felt the burning of the fresh wound as pressure was put on the limb.

Although my eyes were fixed on Holmes and the way his mouth and eyes were moving as he relayed the contents of the letter to us, I could feel John's cautious, steady gaze on me and my injured arm. I subconsciously tucked it in against my dress so that it could no longer be seen.

" _Mr. Holmes,_

" _I have heard of your success in London and I implore you to help my family and I with the dreadful situation into which we have fallen. Three days ago, my brother, Simon Camberwell, left to walk into Rosedale Abbey, the nearest town, named after our family's old estate, which lies near the town with one of the moor's forests between. He was to meet a group of his old school friends from Eton for drinks at the public house. The owner of the pub saw them all outside fighting after a few drinks, but that is all. My dear brother has made no enemies and surely the argument was merely the influence of the drinks they had consumed. He never returned home. It wasn't that after that he spent the night in town, too disoriented to make his way home, or that he was kept in local police custody for disorderly conduct, no. He merely never returned, nor have we seen or heard from any of his friends since then. It is quite a peculiar situation, as his friends are usually eager to drop by and visit, and Edward, the closest of these friends, is much like another brother to me. The local constabulary has no idea what has happened to him, but I refuse to believe that all hope is lost. I beg of you to come and show the others that my brother is not lost forever._

" _Sincerely yours,_

" _Miss Nicole Camberwell."_

As Holmes finished reading, I pulled back slightly, something to do with the name tugging at my memory. I couldn't be sure, but I thought I'd heard it before. Knowing that it wouldn't come to me as long as I tried, I shook off the feeling and concentrated on the case before us.

"So no evidence?" I asked. "No indications, just nothing?"

"As far as this letter dictates," replied Holmes, tossing the letter aside and jumping up from his chair with the energy of a foxhound on the scent. "I've already had Harry purchase our train tickets. We leave tomorrow morning."

Harry was one of the Irregulars. The Baker Street Irregulars were a group of homeless boys, most of them orphans, employed by Holmes to help on cases, for as children they could watch and listen without anyone even acknowledging their presence. I had met Harry once before, about a week after I moved into the Baker Street rooms. I had been coming down the stairs as he was delivering a note to Holmes, and in his enthusiasm he had run straight into me. He was an Irish boy, about nine years of age, with a curly mop of red hair, a bouncy and excitable disposition, and a charming smile that could con the devil out of more than his share of precious jewels.

I trained my mind's eye away from Harry and onto the prospect of our case. I couldn't help but smile. The excitement of cases had done me well, especially after I'd been kidnapped during the Ivanov case. It gave me something to do, things to occupy my mind, and often my hands. And although my veins and skin itched for the blade again, I knew that occupation was a very good thing for me, and a new energy coursed through my body as I stood up and went off to my room to pack for the morning's journey.


	2. Breath of Darkness

Chapter 2: Breath of Darkness

" _And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro' nature, moulding men."_

 _-Alfred Lord Tennyson_

* * *

I spent the majority of the long train ride thinking of Andrew as I sketched the autumn portrait that perpetually existed outside the window of our compartment. I had been to visit him at Scotland Yard that morning prior to our departure, and had informed him that we were leaving. I thought of his eyes, the honesty and concern for me that they beheld. Looking down at the sketchbook in my lap I saw that I had inadvertently incorporated his eyes into the drawing, looking out from the trees lining a creek bed. Hastily I flipped the book closed and shoved it into my open bag at my feet before it could be seen, making a mental note to destroy that page later on.

We spent most of the journey in silence, which was broken once or twice by one of us speaking a few words to which no response was made, a plump woman with a tray had poked her head in to deliver cups of tea to those who wished. Holmes had his fingers steepled and was staring out the window intently, although his gaze and attention never wandered, nor did he ever move, and John was reading several issues of the _Lancet_ and scribbling notes in the margins with a pencil.

After about two hours I could not help but notice that my legs were cramping horribly from sitting still for so long in a compartment with two other people, and there was not enough room for me to politely make my way out into the corridor and walk around a bit, much less stretch out my legs in front of me. So I merely groaned, made a face, and sat perfectly still, crammed into the corner by the window, even though my limbs ached and protested. Eventually, all the time spent there blurred together, and when the train pulled into the station, I had honestly no idea how much time we had spent on the ride.

When we departed the train, the first thing I noted was that the town was small. Smaller by far than Thorndon had been. The train platform was deserted other than the few others who trickled off the train along with us. Several boys ran down the street, chasing each other with sticks, but otherwise the street was deserted. A kind of dank, foul smell hung in the air, from which I gathered that this must be a mining town. The road looked dusty and bumpy, but I was quite used to such things in Thorndon, so I only gave the ground a quick glance as we carried our bags between us to a cab that was standing ready. It didn't look like it was from the town. A permanent dust had settled over everything around, and the cab was unusually devoid of it. I assumed, then, that it had been sent from the Camberwell's estate. And they, of course, must be the family who owned the mines. I glanced over to Holmes and saw a glint in his eye, the one indication of triumph in an otherwise expressionless face. He had come to the same conclusion as I.

The cabbie took a look at us, seeming quite puzzled as to why a young lady was travelling with two men, but he didn't question it with more than his eyes as he spoke with a thick Northern accent. "You must be Mr. Holmes and company." He looked us up and down shiftily as if we did not belong. And as I looked from our clean and crisp fit-for-the-city outfits to his own threadbare and shoddy ensemble to the dusty dirt road beneath us, I had every sense that we were even more out of place than we could ever know.

* * *

The ride from the town to the old Camberwell family estate was not long. It was actually quite surprising how quickly we moved, given that I had grown used to the constantly bustling, crowded atmosphere of the city and the slow, jerky cab rides as the driver manoeuvred the horses through the throng of people and other cabs. The road was bumpy, likely from the rough dirt roads and probably rocks and protruding tree roots scattered about. The ground was also horribly uneven, as the roads themselves were set along the bulbous hills of the moors that occasionally erupted like boils of the earth. One thing I was accustomed to was the sudden jolts underneath us, for it was not unlike the roughly paved streets of London.

Looking out the window, I could see the landscape around us in the dim late-afternoon light. There was no sun to shed a clearer light on our surroundings, for the entire sky was a mass of thick, gray clouds. Indeed, in such grim illumination, the land looked as barren and desolate as the sky above. Hillocks and valleys and plains were visible as far as I could see. The grass was brown and withered, and was completely gone in some places, leaving bare patches of earth that were nearly the same shade of brown as the grass. There were occasional trees in small clusters, some of which were taller, but the growth of many of them was stunted from either a lack or overabundance of nutrients. Their trunks were old and knotted, and their branches stretched out and curved like long, bony fingers. They had already lost their leaves for the most part, but those that remained were brown and dead.

Craning my neck to look further out the window, I could see that we were coming up on a forest, which stretched out before us like the spread of some evil shadow across the land. The trees there appeared taller, almost as if they had grown to shelter something within.

As we approached it, a strong breeze blew, rustling the withered leaves on the trees as if they were part of some macabre dance, prompted by a breath of darkness that seemed to make the forest appear even more sinister.

Before I could repress a shudder, the carriage entered the woods and we found ourselves engulfed by trees from all angles, unable to see anything but black trees and shadows stretching far out into the distance.

It wasn't very much longer before the forest ended, and an old stone house was clearly visible before us. It was large, but not much larger than Thorndon Hall was. It was gothic in design, and spiraled towers rose up to touch the dark and swirling clouds.

The cab stopped, and as John offered me a hand down, I was afforded a clearer glimpse of the house known as Rosedale Abbey.

I gazed at the towers and edifices of the large stone house, and the effect it had as sinister as the surrounding moors. I noticed a slim figure cloaked in shadow against the doorway, and as the shabbily clothed cab driver began unloading our luggage from the back, it rushed down the stairs leading up to the door and across the rolling hills of the lawn towards us. As it came closer I could see that it was a girl, and as she stopped in front of us I gasped softly, for I recognized her. And from her face, it appeared that she remembered me as well. Miss Nicole Camberwell. I knew I had heard the name somewhere before. It was during the Ivanov case, at the docks. She had seen Moriarty leaving the scene. _But what had a girl like her been doing at the West India Docks?_

I stared at her, hoping my question got across, and she stared back at me for a moment before shaking her head lightly and turning to Holmes, her hands clasped in front of her politely. "Mr. Holmes, I presume?" She asked, extending a hand.

"I am," said Holmes, bending to kiss the hand she held out in front of her, his face devoid of any emotion.

"And I must conclude that this is Dr. Watson," she said, turning to John, but her eyes were still on me.

John too kissed her delicate hand, and after a moment she turned back to Holmes, her attention still not too discreetly focused on me.

"I am Nicole Camberwell," she said. "I must thank you for coming. Police here are scarce, and those who came from surrounding towns thought nothing of the matter. My father was adamantly against hiring an investigator, but I simply could not let Simon's disappearance pass without consequence."

Holmes drew back, and although his face remained expressionless, I could sense shock and a bit of disapproval in his demeanour. "Do you mean to say, Miss Camberwell, that your…family has no idea that you asked me here?"

Nicole opened her mouth as if to speak, but she was cut off by the arrival of another man across the lawn. I knew he must be her father. He was tall, towering even above Holmes, with a square jaw and a crooked nose that had obviously been broken sometime in his youth. His eyes were dark and beady, and he reminded me of a snake. Not as much as Moriarty, of course, but enough that the association made me shiver. In all respects, the man was towering and imposing, and being small as I was, I shrunk back slightly.

"Nicole," said the man coldly, "who are these people?"

"Sherlock Holmes," said Holmes, quickly stepping in for Nicole, who looked like she wanted nothing more than to melt into the ground and disappear.

Mr. Camberwell tightened his jaw. "And what is _Sherlock Holmes_ doing on my lawn?"

"I asked them here, Father," said Nicole, her voice shaking. "About Simon –"

He held up a strong hand at his daughter, who flinched despite attempts to conceal the reaction. "Stop. Go inside. Stay there. I will deal with you later."

I watched Nicole as she turned to walk to the house a little too quickly, noticing the involuntary trembling in her hands and arms that I knew was not from the chill wind that swept across the lawn, rustling the trees all around.

"If I may, sir," said John, "I am Doctor John Watson, Mr. Holmes' friend and chronicler. And this is my sister, Miss Emily. We're here regarding your son's disappearance."

Mr. Camberwell's face darkened to match the sky above even more than it already had. "And what concern are the private matters of this family of yours?"

I cautiously eyed Holmes. The man was extremely controlled regarding his emotions for the most part, but having elected to put his genius into detective work rather than another field, the integrity of his cases was a very personal matter to him, and this crossed the line. As I watched him intently, knowing very well that John was doing the same, Holmes' face took on an equally cold quality. "My good sir," he began in icy tones, forcing out the words, "I would hardly call the disappearance of your son a private matter. It is a possible crime, and allowing it to remain uninvestigated is to taint the integrity of justice. I am a private consulting detective – the first to carry such a title. I have fought my way up until this point to carve out a name for myself. This is what I do. My companions and I have travelled here from London simply for the sake of serving justice. Such a man as yourself surely must work hard to uphold his social status. If you wish to maintain such a status, it would be shameful of you to turn us away now. Especially if we have a chance of returning your son to you – which let me say, the odds of success are far greater with us than they would be with any constabulary or police force in the country. Consider your situation and act accordingly."

Mr. Camberwell appeared stunned into silence by the force of Holmes' speech. Realizing his vulnerability, he squared his shoulders and hardened himself again. "One week," he said finally. "I will give you one week in this house to find my son." He glared at each of us in turn. "Marshall," he barked to the shabbily dressed coachman, "see their bags to the door. Curtis will take them from there." He stiffly turned and walked back in the direction of the house, leaving us to follow in his wake.

Shivering in the cold and staring at the man's tense muscles visible from the way he held himself, I knew that we were not only out of place here, but more than a little unwelcome.


	3. An Anchor of Hope

Chapter 3: An Anchor of Hope

" _Hope is the anchor of our souls. I know of no one who is not in need of hope – young or old, strong or weak, rich or poor."_

 _-James E. Faust_

* * *

By the time we had been shown to our rooms, night was falling on the moors. The difference between late afternoon and dusk was not much, for when we arrived the skies had been dark enough. I watched the shadows creep ever closer and finally engulf the house altogether as I stood at the foot of my bed folding clothes and staring absently out the old, thick-paned window. The clouds in the distance were likely to mark the approach of a storm, and my suspicions were confirmed when I heard a faint rumble.

I was restless. There wasn't much that could be done in the way of investigating at night when a storm was fast moving in, and I yearned for something to occupy my mind as well as my hands. I glanced at the clock on the wall opposite my bed. Dinner, we had been told, would not be served for an hour yet.

Letting out a loud sigh, I tossed a crumpled stocking onto the bed. Exploring. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to explore. I needed to explore. Normally, exploring freely in another family's house would be frowned upon, to say the least, but I had an intuitive feeling that as long as I didn't run into Nicole's father, no one would mind all that much. Given the level of fear Nicole had shown towards her father and the loneliness other than visits from her brother's school friends that she had exhibited in her letter, it seemed plain that her mother was dead, or else was ill and not able to interact with others, much as my own mother had been for months prior to her death. She also hadn't mentioned any other siblings in her letter, so I concluded that no one resided in the house aside from Nicole, her father, and the housekeeping staff. It seemed relatively safe for me to take a walk around.

As I reached for the door handle, my left arm began to ache again, and I sucked in a breath and twitched my fingers until the pain subsided somewhat. I opened the door and stepped into the silent hallway.

The walls were made of wood, painted over in a crème sort of colour that would normally make the whole area seem brighter, but the gas lamps adorning the walls at intervals down the whole of the corridor cast a dim glow rather than a bright light, and the wind beginning to blow against the windowpanes broke the otherwise disconcerting silence. As I began to walk, letting my feet guide me, my skirts rustled softly and I stopped every few steps to consider how far I should go. We were on the second floor of the house, and it was unlikely any bedrooms would be located on any floors above. It was too far from the ground floor. So, I hesitantly began to climb the staircase which lay at the end of the carpeted hall, the mahogany railing shiny and worn from so many accumulated polishings and the carpet worn on the right side, close to the railing. _Why would a family wealthy enough to own the Rosedale mines let their carpeting reach such a state of dilapidation?_ With the absence of a Mrs. Camberwell, and Mr. Camberwell having such a seemingly violent temper, it appeared likely that not enough attention was paid to these sorts of things. It also seemed that the house didn't receive enough visitors for it to really matter enough to be a priority.

The walls along the staircase were blank, painted with the same light colour. But there were some patches, rectangular in shape and about two feet in height, that were lighter than the rest of the wall. Something had been hanging there up until very recently, portraits, most likely, and judging from the stark contrast between these patches and the background, ones that had been hanging there for a very long time. So what had caused them to be taken down? The death of the family member, perhaps? No, for very rarely did families hang portraits of living relatives. The custom was to hang them as a sign of respect after the person in question had passed on. A gesture of remembrance, and a sort of symbol that the person was still watching over a family, even in death. A little more than unsettling, in my opinion, but a popular custom nonetheless. For what motive, then, had they been removed? Something didn't settle right with me about this family and this house, but it was more than likely just the atmosphere of the moors, so dark and wicked from the time of our arrival. I tried to convince myself of the fact, but I still couldn't shake a sinister, creeping feeling as I reached the top of the stairs and peered into the corridor ahead.

It was obvious that this floor wasn't used as much as the ones below. The spacing of the gas lamps was sparser here, and none of them were lit. This made the hall all the more silent, and the rain beginning to patter heavily against the windows echoed like hundreds of little running feet. In the darkness I could barely make out a figure standing at one of the windows about halfway down the corridor. It was short, and plainly feminine, and I easily identified it as that of Nicole. "Hello?" I called out softly, easing my way a few steps closer to her, not wanting to startle her too badly.

My intentions, regretfully, failed. She jumped in an almost exaggerated manner, whirling around to face me, shaking slightly. Once she saw me she relaxed. "You were at the docks, in London," she said to me by way of greeting, and from the way she blurted out the words, it was clear that the words had wanted to escape her mouth since she'd seen me with Holmes and John on the lawn.

"As were you," I replied, continuing to step closer until I was standing beside her.

"You…you work with Sherlock Holmes," she said, wagging her pointer finger at me in a rather incredulous way.

My cheeks reddened slightly at her words, and I was very glad for the lack of light. "I don't work with him," I said, denying what was secretly my dream. "I'm just Doctor Watson's half sister. I came to stay with them following the loss of my family."

"Then what on earth were you doing at a Scotland Yard crime scene?"

"I've been wanting to ask you the same thing," I said. "The West India docks hardly seemed the proper place for a girl of your appearance to be going for a stroll, much less unaccompanied. Especially now that I know more about your family's wealth and status."

"I've never been one to follow rules," replied Nicole, ducking her head sheepishly. "Observing the different social classes fascinates me. We keep a home in London, and we travel there every time Father has business to do there and can find someone else to supervise the mines in his absence. That used to be Simon."

"Well, next time you go for a stroll in the lower classes, I'm sure you'd do well to dress to blend in more."

"Anyhow, you're one to tell me that my presence in the docks isn't proper!"

"Ah, that. Can I trust that you won't disclose any particulars of the situation? It was a political matter and was only last month."

"So you did work with Sherlock Holmes on a case!" she let out a small, feminine laugh.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," I said slowly, and then recounted the particulars of the Ivanov case, leading up to the day I had followed the ransom note to the docks and then watched Koval being assassinated.

"So what connection did that tall man in the cloak have to all this?" Nicole asked after I was finished.

"He organized it, setting up a scheme to turn the British and Russian governments against each other," I told her.

There was a pause, and then Nicole said meaningfully, "I don't know why you don't think you're working with him."

"Because I'm only a girl, and such a thing would be highly irregular," I answered promptly.

"But he allowed you to come here with him and the doctor. You could have been instructed to stay in London; I'm sure there's a housekeeper of some sort you could have stayed with. No, at the very least, he's not excluding you from the investigation."

She was, of course, entirely correct, and I did not realize it until she said so. Although Holmes' exterior was perfectly controlled, perhaps he was a little less reticent than usual concerning me. I had dismissed my being taken along as being the result of John's worry for me as he had expressed it to Holmes yesterday, but the idea of it being more because Holmes trusted me caught me more than a little off guard.

Suddenly, a bell rang from somewhere in the house, cutting our conversation short. Nicole sharply turned in the direction of the stairwell. "That'll be dinner," she said. "Come on, we'd best get downstairs before we're late."

I noticed the tremors in her hands again as we started down the stairs, and I made a mental note to ask her about it, perhaps sometime after dinner was over.

* * *

By the time dinner was over, the rain was pounding harder than ever. Mr. Camberwell made no offers to entertain us after the meal, nor did any of us expect him to, I think, so I went straight back to my room and was in the midst of finishing folding my clothing when there was a knock on the door and Nicole entered.

"I'm sorry," she said, her cheeks flushed a delicate, rosy pink. "I don't mean to intrude. I just wanted to apologize on behalf of my father. My mother's passing last year was very hard on all of us."

I watched her face as she spoke. She wasn't telling me the truth. It wasn't her mother's death that had made her father so callous. That much was in her eyes. "My own mother passed a few years ago as well," I said to her, "and it turned my father into a very secluded individual. Please, come in." I gestured for her to sit down on the bed, and she closed the door softly and did so.

"I thought you said earlier that you had lost your family," she said softly, looking at me curiously through large brown eyes.

"I did," I said with a sigh, setting down the stack of folded clothes and taking a seat beside her. "My father – stepfather, I mean – was killed two months ago. After that, I had no family left and I was forced to leave my family's estate for London to stay with my half brother, the only relative that I knew of. It came as a great surprise to me that this half brother of mine lodged with Sherlock Holmes."

Ariana. John was not the only family I had left. There was Ariana. God help her, if she was still alive following the brief moment I had lain eyes on her through that window when I had been held captive by Moriarty. I felt myself starting to shake at the memory, and I willed myself to control it.

"You mean you didn't know?" Nicole asked with a laugh.

"I knew of him, but no, I didn't know of that," I replied, bringing myself sharply back to the present and resolving to enjoy the conversation.

Nicole grew dark and silent for a moment, and when she looked up again I could see fear in her eyes. "Do you think you'll be able to find my brother?"

I reached over to place my hand on top of hers. "No case is too formidable for Sherlock Holmes," I told her with a half smile, at the same time trying to reassure myself of the fact.

"But he's been missing four days now," she said. "We have no word from him and we have no idea of anywhere he could have gone."

"What about his school friends, whom you mentioned in the letter?"

"What of them?"

"Do you think they could have had anything to do with it?"

She drew back in surprise. "No, of course not," she said. "They've been wonderful friends with Simon since he was at Eton years ago."

"Nicole," I said to her cautiously, "your brother's friends were the last people to see him, as far as we know. They're the first people Holmes is going to suspect as having arranged his disappearance."

Nicole shook her head vehemently, biting her lip. "They couldn't have." Tears began to well up at the corners of her eyes. "Simon's dead, isn't he?" she asked. "It's been four days and we've heard nothing. He can't still be alive, right?"

I wanted nothing less in that moment than to tell her so, but she was most likely correct. Four days was far too long a time to go without having heard anything. If he'd been staying somewhere else, he would have either returned home or sent word. If he'd been kidnapped, a ransom note would have been sent by now. Four days was far too long, and I wasn't the only one who thought so. I'd seen it in Holmes' eyes when he read us the letter, and again on the train. He knew as well as I the odds. He knew that in all probability, we were not coming to investigate a disappearance. We were coming to investigate a murder.

I couldn't bring myself to say any of this to Nicole, fragile as she seemed, so I merely told her, "There's always hope."

She must have known the doubt and insincerity my words carried, for the fear and emptiness in her eyes did not desist, and as we sat silently on my bed, listening to the sounds of the storm outside the window, I wished I could do something more to help her hold to an anchor of hope, whether or not it was to be lifted to a less desolate and hopeless place.


	4. All That Lives Must Die

Chapter 4: All That Lives Must Die

" _Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,_

 _Passing through nature to eternity."_

 _-William Shakespeare_

* * *

The next morning dawned a pale grey light. Most of the clouds from the day before had moved out, leaving only a thinly veiled barrier between us and the sky. The rain had stopped, leaving a fresh scent that was on the verge of overpowering the bitter taste in the air that permanently hung around the entire area surrounding the mines. Puddles could be seen every few yards along the ground as I peered out one of the windows on either side of the front doors after breakfast.

Holmes and John had donned thick rubber boots and gone out to search the woods we had driven through just the afternoon before. It was probable, Holmes had said, that if anything had happened to Simon Camberwell, clues could be found about his location in the forest, since naturally he'd have had to pass through it in order to get back to the house.

I was itching with restlessness. Not excluded from the investigation, Nicole had said. I should be out there, searching. I had lost something very dear to me, and it felt right in a sense that I should be helping others find what was dear to them. Every time I closed my eyes or allowed my mind to stray, I felt the pain of losing Ariana. Having my twin, a part of me, ripped from me. There was a hole in my heart that couldn't be filled by anything other than gaining her back. I knew loss. And God help me, I would save as many other people from feeling it as I possibly could. Never mind what was proper. Even if I was a female I was still a human, and I could still do as much as many and probably more than most people cared to.

Biting my lip as I made up my mind, I turned to Nicole, who was standing pale-faced behind me. "Do you have any extra pairs of boots?" I asked.

She nodded immediately, almost eagerly, as if she'd been waiting for me to say something. "Yes, I believe they're in the kitchen. The servants use them when crossing the lawn and walking into town. I'll go fetch them both."

Before I could open my mouth to tell her that only one pair was needed, she was gone. She returned a few moments later, clutching two pairs of boots. She handed the first to me and promptly bent down and began pulling on the second.

"Wait," I said, holding out an arm to stop her. "You should stay here."

She shook her head. "No, of course I'm not! I won't be the only one staying here. If you're going out there, then so am I."

"Nicole, there could be things you don't want to see," I warned her, thinking of the fearful look in her eyes the previous night as she'd realized that her brother may not be alive. "I am more accustomed to these things. I would not be living with Sherlock Holmes if I couldn't handle it."

Nicole looked up at me, eyes wide. "I can see what's in your eyes, Emily. I can see the pain. I can see the fear. You're not living with Sherlock Holmes because you can handle it. You're living with him because you don't have a choice. And yet still you don't shy away. You could stay away from it all. A part of you wants to. And yet you don't. I will not stay away from it either. Let me come with you."

Her words hit me deep enough that I drew back, inadvertently giving her enough room to finish donning her boots. She was right. Of course she was right. I wasn't accustomed to it. A part of me did want to stay away. Every time I had seen a body, I felt ill. Defeated. As if I were connected to all of humanity, and I was watching it fall apart piece by piece before me. But yet there was something about it. Something that I couldn't draw away from, no matter how much it hurt. I wanted to help. I wanted to save people. Healers, my mother had called those people. Those who knew pain and had a burning desire to help others in the midst of it.

I swallowed hard and pulled on my own boots. "Let's go, then," I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

We silently slipped out the door and set off across the lawn, pulling the collars of our cloaks up against the chill breeze that swept the land.

"Bad luck with the storm last night," I muttered as I sidestepped a puddle on the ground only to land in a deeper one that I had missed.

"What do you mean?" asked Nicole, taking note of my wrong step and taking care to avoid both puddles.

"Water," I replied, quoting what I had heard Holmes say earlier this month after he returned from a case in St. John's Wood, "is the bane of the investigator. It washes most vital evidence away. Footprints, a blood trail, a scrap of cloth, all of it could be gone unless we're very lucky. Water cleanses. And the worst thing that could happen to a crime scene is that it could be cleansed. After last night's storm, I fear the trail could by now be cold."

"There's still hope, though?" Nicole asked with a shudder as the breeze picked up slightly, and the dead leaves on the trees rustled as we approached the woods.

"If there is, it's slim. Not even Sherlock Holmes can outsmart the forces of nature."

As we kept walking, the trees loomed above us, menacing even in daylight. The air seemed to get damper and colder around us, and the bridge of twisted branches over our heads seemed designed to keep some evil tucked away inside, and I knew that whatever the forest was keeping hidden, we had entered the cage. We were in the middle of it.

"Keep your eyes peeled," I said to Nicole, my voice low, "for anything."

As I spoke, I let my own eyes sweep over the area around us, concentrating on every leaf and patch of mud that covered the ground. Anything out of the ordinary.

"Emily," said Nicole after about ten minutes when we had wandered deeper into the forest. "What on earth is that stench? Is that coming from the mines?"

"Shhh!" I cautioned her. "Be quiet. We're not supposed to be out here."

I sniffed the air. I hadn't noticed it before. All my focus had been trained on my sight, not my sense of smell. Nicole had done well pointing it out. I raised a hand to cover my nose and mouth, for I felt bile rising in my throat as my stomach turned over. The smell was awful. It was worse than the bitter smell of smoke and exposed minerals coming from the mines. It was worse, even, than the foul odor of waste and filth and unwashed bodies that pierced every street of London. It was the most nauseating thing I'd ever smelled, like the sickly sweet aroma of rotted fruit that has been feasted upon by flies, but somehow different. Somehow worse. Even though I was shielding my nose and mouth, it was still so awful that my eyes watered and I was terrified to breathe it in, and I wondered how it couldn't be smelled from all over the forest.

Nicole and I, both trying to breathe as little as possible, looked around frantically for the source of the smell. My vision was blurry from the tears forming in my eyes, and I tried desperately to blink them away so I could see the ground in front of me in something other than brown streaks.

Suddenly, from somewhere off to my right, Nicole screamed. I whirled around and started running in her direction. She was standing in the middle of a web of protruding tree roots, stretching to meet each other in a dark, twisting embrace. She was staring at something lying between two trees. I heard shouting in the distance and knew that Holmes and John had heard Nicole's screaming. I moved closer to see what she was staring at, transfixed.

 _Oh my God._ The source of the awful stench. A body, mangled and torn, in the midst of being decomposed by nature. As a rule, everything breaks down over time when exposed to the elements. Especially the human body. After what was presumably four days, the skin was beginning to turn a sickening shade of marbled green, and was starting to sag, no longer connected to the skeleton. The eyes were larger than normal, bulging out of the sockets with the expression of a madman. The jawbone was tense and rigid, the mouth clenched tightly.

I retched, turning away for a moment to swallow the bile. When I turned back, I saw that Nicole had collapsed onto the ground, and I became aware that she was screaming at the top of her lungs, her words incomprehensible, her entire body shaking. I knelt down and tried to speak to her, to comfort her, but my words did no good. Her body was rigid with shock, and I wasn't strong enough to pull her away from the sight of her brother's decaying corpse.

A moment later, Holmes and John arrived, and they too briefly covered their faces in reaction to the smell. They afforded barely a glimpse at me. "Watson," Holmes said in a low voice, "kindly escort Miss Camberwell back to the house. I'd like your opinion as a medical man when you return."

My brother nodded and gently lifted Nicole in his arms, as she must have been in no condition for walking. I listened to her hysterical wailing fade as they disappeared into the trees.

I didn't think Holmes would acknowledge my presence, but I was wrong, for after a moment he spoke. "What are you doing out here?" he asked sharply, seeming as if he were already used to and unfazed by the smell of rotting flesh right under his nose.

"I-I needed to help search," I answered. "I couldn't just stay there."

I expected him to let a quick, half smile flit across his face, with some remark about how he knew and that was why he'd let me come along, but instead he just gave me a cold and hard look. "What was _she_ doing out here?"

I averted my gaze to the ground. "I know I shouldn't have let her come," I replied. "I tried to warn her about what we might find. But she wouldn't allow me to leave her behind."

Holmes did not reply this time, but instead sprang down upon the ground and whipped out a small magnifying lens. "Staggering footsteps led from the direction of the town," he muttered under his breath. He abruptly sprang up to examine the bottom of the dead man's shoes, then, apparently satisfied, returned to his examination of the ground.

"Excuse me," I said, watching his actions carefully, "but wouldn't all the rain last night have washed away any footprints?"

He didn't reply, too caught up in studying the evident footprints underneath the blanket of wet leaves.

A few moments later, John reappeared, and immediately knelt to examine the body. "Dilated pupils," he muttered softly to himself. He lifted the arm to look at the fingers. "Advanced cyanosis and _rigor mortis._ " He nodded affirmatively and leaned back. "Holmes," he said.

Holmes looked up. "Yes, old fellow?"

"The cause of death appears to have been asphyxiation. The way the jaw is clenched indicates advanced _rigor mortis_ after death, which could be the result of convulsions and seizures prior to death, and there are scrapes on the knuckles which suggest that he was grappling for something – my God!" John recoiled at something on top of the body, and Holmes sprang over, full of energy and eyes alight with the thrill of the hunt.

John held up something he was gingerly holding in his handkerchief. Despite the stench and repulsing sight before me, I took a few steps closer and leaned in to look. I gasped and raised a hand to cover my mouth again. "Oh my God, is that his tongue?" I asked softly.

John replied without looking up at me, working to pry the dead man's mouth open. "Yes," he said, grunting, "it is. Convulsions it must have been, then. So severe that he bit off his own tongue." Then he did a double take. "Emily, what the blazes are you doing here?" he hissed. "Go back to the house. Stay with Miss Camberwell."

I crossed my arms and shook my head, making an attempt to steel myself against the malodor. "Absolutely not. You did not force me to stay in London, I expect because you didn't trust me not to get in trouble, so you can't expect me to just sit around here, especially when there's a case. A case that you let me hear about from the inception. I'm staying right here, and you'd do well to include me."

John sighed and muttered what seemed to be a prayer, but did nothing to desist me as he continued to examine the body.

Gingerly, I stepped around to kneel behind the corpse's head, moving my eyes slowly over the body, my mouth tightly closed to keep from gagging at the smell and the sickly, unnatural sight. "What's that?" I asked, pointing to a tear in the shirt covering the late Simon Camberwell's left shoulder.

"Probably nothing but the markings of an animal that came by looking for old flesh to eat," said John, giving the area nothing but a brief glance.

Holmes, however, shook his head, looking very interested. "No, not an animal, Watson!" he exclaimed, bending over the shoulder. "An animal's claws or teeth would make a jagged tear as they ripped it apart. This is far too straight-edged and clean." He took a small knife from the pocket of his trousers and began cutting away at the cloth with it until the entire area of the shoulder was exposed. "Halloa! What have we here?" he mused.

John and I both leaned in to have a closer look. There was a wound in his shoulder, shallow, about two inches long. A small amount of dried blood was crusted on the cloth of the shirt Holmes had pried away from the skin.

My brother furrowed his brow in confusion. "A knife wound," he murmured. "But it's hardly a scratch. Remarkably shallow. It couldn't have hit any major arteries. Not enough blood loss to cause much harm. And how on earth could it have caused asphyxiation like that?"

"Asphyxiation, you say?" Holmes looked from the man's eyes, pupils far larger in size than usual, which gave the face a gruesomely panicked expression, to the tongue he had bitten off in thrashing about before death, to the wound on the left shoulder studiously.

"Yes, Holmes," said John, watching him as if trying to conclude the purpose of his methods. "Asphyxiation. From the lack of scabbing around the wound, I'd wager a fair amount that it was sustained no more than a few hours prior to his unfortunate demise. But that coupled with the asphyxiation doesn't add up."

"Perhaps the wound was sustained in that fight he had with his friends, and the asphyxiation was brought about by alcohol poisoning. We know he'd been drinking," I suggested.

Holmes gave me a sideways look, nodding slightly and giving me the smallest of grins, a brief upturn of the corner of his mouth. "Excellent hypothesis, Emily, but no," he said, gesturing to the corpse's mouth. "Alcohol poisoning was not a factor in the asphyxiation here. Note the lack of frothing around the mouth. You are correct about one thing, though; the wound was sustained during the altercation outside of the public house in town."

"Then what of the asphyxiation?" John asked, and I must confess that I was as stumped as he was.

"My dear fellow," Holmes said, "it only doesn't add up when one has a distinctive lack of imagination. You must consider what may be true, furthering what you already know for certain. The knife certainly must have been tipped with poison of some sort, causing the convulsions and death by asphyxiation."

John shook his head. "But with a four day old corpse and no weapon, how will we be able to ascertain the identity of the poison?"

Holmes had leaned back upon his knees and was scouring the area around us with the sharp gaze of an eagle watching for leaping fish to catch as he swoops over water. With a cry, he sprang up and ran for about ten yards to a pile of leaves and began digging through them with the use of his foot. A moment later, he gave an ejaculation of triumph and held up a silver and ebony pocket knife with his handkerchief.

John and I both stood and dashed to meet him and see what the fuss was. John looked, gaping, at the knife Holmes had discovered on the ground. "But how can that be?" he asked in amazement. "If the wound was sustained in the fight outside the pub, how in blazes did the knife get here? Suppose one of the others drew their knife during the altercation and lightly slashed him across the shoulder to keep him in check. The knife would have stayed in their possession. But somehow it ended up in a pile of leaves several yards away from a dead body."

An elated expression on his face, Holmes turned over the knife, crusted with dried blood, and held it out so that we could see. The initials _S.C._ were engraved into the ebony handle. Simon Camberwell. "It was his knife," John said.

"But how does that explain how it came to be buried under the leaves?" I asked.

"And how did you know it would be there?" John added quickly.

"The former cannot be answered as of yet," said Holmes. "The latter, however, I can elaborate upon. You will observe this tree here." He pointed to the tall tree that loomed above us into the sky. "I have made a study of the deciduous trees of Britain, and even written a little monograph on the subject. This is a _Sorbus Aria,_ or common whitebeam. This is a leaf of the common whitebeam." He stooped to pick up a leaf, displaying it to us. It was small and round, with jagged edges shaped like tiny teeth. "So it seems more than odd," he continued, "that the leaves of the _Quercus Robur,_ or English oak, one of which is growing a few yards away, should be found directly underneath the common whitebeam." He picked up another handful of leaves, which bore the familiar curved shape of oak leaves.

"Simply absurd," John muttered, shaking his head.

"I do believe," said Holmes, pocketing the dead man's knife wrapped in his own handkerchief, "that once the proper authorities to move the body have been notified, a word with the owner of that public house is in order."


	5. The Test of Courage

Chapter 5: The Test of Courage

" _Often the test of courage is not to die but to live."_

 _-Vittorio Alfieri_

* * *

Rosedale Abbey seemed even more silent and sinister in the hours leading into that night than it had when we had arrived the day before. Once we had arrived back at the house, Holmes had headed into town to notify the constabulary that there was a body in the woods and then speak to the proprietor of the pub, and John had gone to Nicole's room to check on her. I stood in the doorway while he took her pulse and looked in her eyes.

"She's in shock," he said to me, pulling the blankets of her bed further up around her. "Stay with her, please, and come fetch me if there are any worrying changes. I'll be in my chambers just down the hall."

She didn't stir or speak for hours, and I simply sat, watching her, plagued with the memory of her brother's body.

I'd never seen – or smelled – a corpse that old. Death had a smell, my mother had taught us. It was musty, as if of mouldy cloth and dust, for death, she had said, was as old as life. When he came, you couldn't distinguish his presence as more than a feeling or a shadow, and he left that scent behind him. I smelled death in my mother's chambers on the day she died.

But the scent emanating from the corpse in the woods was not that of death. It was that of decay. It wasn't a subtle odour, bitter tasting and hanging thick in the air like a veil. It had been a putrid, nauseating odour. It was far different than anything I had ever experienced before, and dwelling upon it was not pleasant in the least. I needed some kind of a distraction while I was staying in here.

I quietly raised myself off of the edge of the bed from whence I'd been perching, and went to sit at the small desk in the corner of the room. I pulled out a sheet of paper from one of the drawers which stood halfway open, dipped a pen into the open inkwell, and began to write.

 _10_ _th_ _October, 1887_

 _Dear Andrew,_

 _I must confess that this place is much darker than I expected it to be. The trees loom out of the ground like tall, armored guards shielding some cruel secret. There are mines nearby, and they omit a bitter scent that permeates all the surrounding earth. Not only can you smell it, but taste it. It leaves a harsh aftertaste when you breathe it in or open your mouth to speak. It's less strong here at the Abbey, but it is still present, if a little more subtle._

 _I didn't say anything to you about the matter when we spoke prior to our departure, but I knew from the time Holmes read the letter what was going to happen. I knew that three days was far too long. I knew that if he were still alive, the family would have heard something. Holmes knew it too. I saw his face on the train. I saw it as soon as I walked into the sitting room to hear the contents of the letter. It was true, of course. Simon Camberwell is dead. We found his half-rotted body this morning, in the woods between the house and the town. My God, it was the worst thing I've ever smelled. It's worse than the slums, worse, even, than the mines here._

 _Nicole, the one who wrote to us, she was the girl at the docks when we were investigating the small matter of that red X. I knew I remembered her name, but I couldn't recall where from until we arrived and she greeted us on the lawn. And then there's the matter of her father. Mr. Camberwell and Nicole are now the only two people left of the family living in the house, as far as I can tell. I have a suspicion that he hurts her, but I can't know for sure. She hasn't said anything about it to me, and I've been hesitant to ask her._

 _North Yorkshire truly is a dismal place, especially here near the mines. I only wish that there were something to lift my spirits and tear me away from the oppression of such a dark and fearsome landscape._

Just then, Nicole spoke, her voice quiet and sounding much like a frightened mouse. "Please don't go."

"What was that?" I asked, putting the pen down and moving to sit on the bed beside her again.

"My father will want you to leave now that you've found Simon," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "Please don't." Her lip quivered.

I put a hand gently on her shoulder. "Nicole, your father is the authority in this house. We can hardly stay without his permission. But that doesn't mean we still won't find who murdered your brother."

She shook her head, her breathing coming fast. "No, please. I can't stay in this house without Simon. He's the only one who could hold my father back."

With her words came a weight that dropped in my stomach, and I knew that my intuitions about Mr. Camberwell had been correct. "He hurts you, doesn't he?" I asked softly, already knowing what the answer would be.

Nicole nodded, whimpering as she tried and failed to hold back tears, subconsciously jerking her arms closer to her body, as if to shield them.

"May I see?" I asked, holding out a hand.

It took her a moment of consideration, but then she haltingly held out her left arm to me. I carefully pushed up the sleeve of her dress, a knot forming in my stomach when Nicole bit her lip in pain as I uncovered an arm riddled up and down with bruises of various sickening colours. Older ones were fading to yellow with a tinge of blue, and newer ones were black and purple and coupled with small scrapes.

"I'm going to fetch John," I said, starting to stand.

"No," she said sharply, taking hold of my arm with the hand she'd extended to me, hissing from the pain of the effort it must have taken her to grip.

I bent down close to her. "Nicole, please. He's a doctor. He can help. Not only that, but surely intervention as far as your father is concerned is required."

She seemed incredibly doubtful and more than a little anxious at the prospect, but she let go of my arm.

Absently stuffing the unfinished letter to Andrew into my pocket, I hurriedly left the room and knocked at the door of the room two doors down, which I knew was John's room from when the butler had shown us where we would be staying the day before.

My brother hastily answered the door, and I knew he'd been expecting me to come for him, a fact confirmed by the black medical bag I could see sitting ready on the bed behind him.

"What's changed?" he asked urgently.

I shook my head. "The change is for the better. She's alert and speaking. But it's something else. Bring your bag."

He went to pick up his black bag and then followed me back to Nicole's room, where we found her sitting upright, her arms folded in her lap.

John cursed under his breath when he saw Nicole's arm, and from the way the air suddenly changed in the room, I knew that he had guessed where the mottled bruises had come from.

I could see Nicole shaking as she held up the arm for John to examine, and she was unable to look either of us in the eye.

"Miss Camberwell, may I see your other arm?" he asked softly.

Biting her lip and keeping her eyes focused on the sheets, she nodded silently and raised her right arm, pushing up the sleeve to reveal more bruises. At the sight of them my stomach turned again, and the most predominant among my feelings was a horrible, heartbreaking pity for what she must have gone through. Worse, undoubtedly, than the hardships I had faced during my own youth, for my stepfather, though decidedly hostile, had rarely interacted with Ariana and I, let alone laid a hand on us.

As John began to stick plaster bandages over her scrapes and rub salve carefully onto the bruises, he asked, "How long has your father been doing this to you, Miss Camberwell?"

"Has it been since your mother died last year?" I asked, if only to gauge her reaction, for I remembered well the look in her eyes when she had dismissed that as the cause of her father's callosity the night before.

She shook her head. "No, since before that. Ever since I can remember, really."

Something had begun to tug at the corners of my mind, the answer to some mystery that lay just beyond my reach. Mr. Camberwell's violent tendencies, Mrs. Camberwell's death a year ago, and the pictures that had been recently taken down from the walls. They were all connected somehow, but this was not the moment to plumb the affair.

John set his jaw firmly, and in that tiny fraction of infinite time, I saw something of the war in him. It was rare that these glimpses showed through his wizened exterior. I supposed that must not always have been the case. He had come home from Afghanistan six years ago, he had told me, sent back to England following a gunshot wound in the shoulder and a bout of enteric fever. Not long after his return, he began lodging and taking cases with Sherlock Holmes, dragged back into war probably sooner than he would have liked. The war against crime was different than that against the Ghazis which had raged in the last decade, but it was no more civil and no less perilous. I knew that memories of what he had seen still haunted him, but when one is accustomed to fighting, one does not let weakness take hold, for fear of becoming a less effective soldier.

I swallowed hard, realizing that I had let weakness take hold within myself. My arms itched at the very thought. I squeezed my eyes closed and vowed to be strong. John was not the only one in the middle of a war. I was there too. And God help me, I had already vowed not to retreat. I had vowed to devote my efforts to helping people. I was a healer. And nowhere were healers needed more than on the front lines.

Opening my eyes, I saw that John was closing his bag and straightening up. "I'm going to see if Holmes is in his room," he said, giving me a sideways glance. "Emily, if you see him, tell him I would benefit from a word with him."

I nodded, and he left.

I turned to Nicole. "Do you wish me to stay with you?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, it's quite all right. But, before you go, I'd like to know something. Does Holmes suspect Simon's friends from Eton?"

Her words caused me to pause where I had been half turned to the door, and I sank down on the bed beside her. "At this point in the investigation, it's a likely path to follow. They were, as far as we know, the last ones to see your brother alive, and they fought prior to his death. There were also some…indications around the area of his…person today." I chose my words carefully, not wanting to upset her.

Nicole looked up at me sharply. "What sort of indications?" she asked.

"Are you sure you want to hear about it?" I replied cautiously.

She took a deep, steadying breath, but then replied in the affirmative. "Yes, I'm quite all right." Her voice was even, and stronger than it had been since we arrived. This was the girl who had been wandering the West India Docks, the strong young woman who knew more than a little about defending her virtues and who wasn't afraid of a little blood.

"Your brother, it seems, was slashed across the shoulder with his own pocketknife."

"His own? Isn't that a little odd? He wouldn't have done it himself."

"The presumption," I said, speaking slowly, "although it was unspoken, is that during the altercation outside the pub, he threatened one of his friends with it, and they took it from him. Then either he said or did something provocative, and the one who had taken his knife either slashed him in contempt, or to keep him in check."

Nicole closed her eyes for a moment, obviously recalling the sight of her only brother's body. "He didn't bleed to death, though," she said after a pause. "So what killed him?"

"Poison," I replied. "We aren't sure what sort, though."

Suddenly, Holmes appeared in the doorway, looking out of breath. "Where's Watson?" he asked urgently.

"He said he was going to look for you in your room, but I imagine he's back in his own chambers by now," I replied. "What did you find so worth the rush?"

"Perhaps the answer to no less than a fourth of our mystery," he answered swiftly. "Come, now. The game is afoot!"


	6. The Dim Haze of Mystery

Chapter 6: the Dim Haze of Mystery

" _It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit."_

 _-Antoine Rivarol_

* * *

I rose from the bed and ran out the door to follow Holmes in hopes of keeping up, for he had moved so quickly that one could have missed him in a blink.

The door to John's room had been thrown open in haste, so I skidded to a halt in the doorway. Holmes was standing beside my brother's desk chair, bouncing on the balls of his feet, the familiar glint in his eye that always marked the discovery of some great thread of the yarn that had to be followed in the hopes of happening upon its source.

John was looking up from a manuscript on the desk in front of him, and Holmes' sudden arrival seemed to have startled him, as there was a rather sizeable splatter of ink on the page, which seemed to distress him greatly.

"She's here, Holmes, get on with it! Whatever can have caused you such great excitement?" John asked, gingerly setting down his pen on top of the desk blotter.

"The proprietor of the public house in town, an establishment known as the Black Kettle, was very useful indeed. He told me the details of the altercation he witnessed between Simon Camberwell and his associates several days ago. It was a drunken spat, not very soundly based, as they'd all had a good number of drinks. The late Mr. Camberwell took his ebony handled knife from his pocket and waved it threateningly in the face of Edward Jamison, one of his friends. Mr. Jamison took the knife from Mr. Camberwell and when he attempted to wrest it from his grip, slashed him across the shoulder with it as a warning. Mr. Camberwell then grabbed his knife and staggered off in the direction of the woods, heading home. The owner of the Black Kettle, one Mr. Peter Johnson, then followed Mr. Camberwell a short ways into the woods to ascertain that he would not be any danger to himself. He was staggering in a halting sort of way, and cursing to himself and punching tree trunks in his drunken haze."

"That explains the scrapes on his knuckles," I interjected.

Holmes nodded in affirmation. "Indeed it does," he said. "Mr. Johnson admitted to me that Mr. Camberwell seemed too violent and he didn't dare to approach him. He began shouting at things which weren't there, and soon tossed his knife down upon the ground in a fit of rage, looking about him as though he were being hunted and tossing handfuls of leaves on top of the knife, obscuring it from view. He wandered so far off the path that eventually Mr. Johnson ceased his efforts and returned to town."

"That certainly offers some help in determining the poison," John mused softly.

"Does it, though?" I asked. "We know he was drunk. Couldn't that behavior have just been the influence of the alcohol?"

"But you said poison killed him, so doesn't that seem like the more likely explanation?" Came a voice from the doorway, perfectly calm and level.

I whirled around, starting along with my two companions, to find Nicole leaning in the doorway, arms folded thoughtfully in front of her chest.

"Miss Camberwell, what are you doing out of bed?" John asked, moving to stand.

"Including myself, seeing as no one else seems entirely keen to do so," she replied.

Holmes and John both turned to glare at me, as if I were the one responsible for giving our young client the idea to jump into the midst of the investigation of her brother's murder.

Was I? I couldn't be sure. I most definitely hadn't stopped her from accompanying me into the woods. But I also wouldn't have been able to stop her. Brute force would certainly not have been proper, and she was as strong willed and independent as myself. I decided that no, it couldn't be my fault, and wiped any semblance of guilt from my mind. I realized that I didn't find anything particularly wrong with it anyways, which helped ease my mind a great deal.

"I understand your reservations on the matter of allowing me to assist in your investigation," Nicole said. "It would be ridiculous to allow the client, someone emotionally involved, to put themselves in a harrowing position. You must also have your doubts concerning the fact that I am a girl with no practical experience in the field of investigation. But I assure you that I can be of more help than anyone else you will find here. This is a mining town, and the local residents are of a significantly lower class than we are. They are all very suspicious of anyone dressed as you are, seeing as they are accustomed to rather unpleasant and demanding aristocracy wielding such clothing. I'm sure you witnessed that reticence, Mr. Holmes, when you went to speak to Mr. Johnson. Everyone else around the bar immediately left, did they not? And didn't old Johnson require more than a little prodding before saying anything to you? It's less than likely that my father would offer you any assistance. I am your best option. I know the area. I can help you."

Holmes and John seemed more than a little taken aback by her bold speech, and they took their eyes off of me, for which I was glad, for the spotlight was not where my talents were strongest.

"She's right, you know," I said to them after a moment of silence. "You saw the way the coachman looked at us when we arrived. Those of our social status are far from welcomed here. Our options are few, and quite frankly, if we don't accept her offer of help, we'd be better off giving up the case altogether. And you know we can't do that, for the integrity of justice." I had my eyes fixed largely on Holmes, knowing that he would never be capable of giving up an active investigation. He prided himself on his successes far too much for that.

Finally, after a moment of silence so profound that I could practically hear the gears grinding in Holmes' head, he spoke, his face devoid of any emotional inclination. "Fine. But not for any reason other than that this place is her home, and she is far more knowledgeable about the surrounding landscape than we are."

But during that moment that Holmes spoke, I was not filled with triumph as I should have been, having successfully defended Nicole and secured a victory for this investigation. Something had been tugging at my mind since Nicole had said that her father was unlikely to offer any assistance. His disposition made it unlikely that he would not eject us from the house once he received news that we had uncovered his son's body. Did he even know?

I turned to Holmes and John, looking between them for explanation. "Did either of you inform Mr. Camberwell of his son's demise?" I asked.

"I did inform him of it, yes," John said. "It was when I brought Miss Camberwell back to the house today. He stopped me and asked what had happened. I put her to bed and then explained to him what we had found."

"Don't you find it a little strange that he didn't demand that we leave the premises by nightfall?" I inquired. "He made it explicitly clear that we were only granted permission to stay until we found his son, within the week."

"Having lived with the man for my entire life, I can attest that this is true," Nicole added. "He most certainly would have demanded that you pack your bags and head back to London by now."

John shook his head. "All I know is that he called for a housemaid to bring tea to his room, and then he walked away."

"We'll hear from him at dinner, I am sure," Holmes mused, glancing at the clock above my brother's temporary desk as he rubbed his chin.

Sure enough, within a moment of his speaking, the bell rang throughout the house.

I took Nicole aside in an alcove as our party descended the staircase, loosely tugging her arm, unsure of how tight to grip it. "Will you be all right to face your father?" I asked with concern.

Nicole tooked away, but nodded after a moment. "Yes. I have rather a lot of anxiety, but I shall be all right. What if he asks you to leave?"

"As I said, Holmes has no mind to return to London until the case is solved. At worst we will pay for a couple of rooms at the inn in town. But Nicole, you are aware that they will have to confront your father?"

She took a shuddering breath and swallowed her fear. "Yes. I fear for my life if I shall have to stay here."

My heart broke for my new friend and the terror she faced, and I took her hands in mine and squeezed them. "Have hope, some solution will be found, I am sure of it."

Nicole nodded, struggling to hold back tears, and embraced me. "Thank you, Emily. Come, we can't be late for the meal or it will only worsen matters."

* * *

Ten minutes past Nicole and I arrived at the table, Mr. Camberwell was still absent. A roast duck sat posed elegantly in the centre of the table, and the four of us avoided eye contact with it, for fear it would make our famished stomachs growl even more.

Something was amiss. Even if he had needed some time to compose himself mentally after receiving the news that his son's body had been discovered in the woods outside his home, surely by now we would have heard something else from the man, whether it was an order to leave or not, and he most certainly would have faced us at dinner if he had any semblance of manners, however grieved he might be.

I could feel a change in the air, and I turned to Holmes, sensing that the scales of logical probability were at work in his mind, weighing various scenarios against the facts and narrowing down the list of the most probable candidates for the truth. "Miss Camberwell, where is your father's room?" he asked, snapping back into the present.

"It's on the first floor. He wanted it close to his study, rather than on the same floor as the other bedrooms. I'll show you."

I thought for a moment that Holmes would object, in an attempt to shield Nicole from whatever we might find, but evidently the situation was too urgent, for he nodded and darted for the door, and John, Nicole and I had no choice but to follow behind him.

* * *

Mr. Camberwell's door was locked when we arrived upstairs. Holmes cursed under his breath as he rattled the doorknob. "Mr. Camberwell!" he shouted. "Open the door!"

There was no reply. He cursed again and looked around us quickly for anyone who might have a key to the room, but the hallway was empty. "Stand back," he growled, and immediately John pushed Nicole and I back a few paces. Holmes aimed a strong and well placed kick at the lock, and the door swung inwards. On seeing what was inside the room, Holmes gave a cry of dismay and ran inside, John close behind. I moved forward to see what had caused such a reaction, although I had a little more than a sinking feeling what lay inside the room. Nicole gasped and her hands flew up to her face, but her reaction was far less anguished than it had been this morning.

The body of Mr. Camberwell lay on the floor, looking as stiff and pale as his son had. John knelt on the floor beside him, feeling at his neck for any semblance of a pulse, but it was, of course, futile. Even I knew from the way that his eyes were glazed over that there was no possibility of his life being spared.

My eyes travelled from the rigid corpse to the sheets that appeared to have been aggressively pulled off of the bed to the teacup that had been dropped on the carpet, spilling its contents. And even before John proclaimed it, I knew that the cause of death was the same as that of Simon Camberwell. Asphyxiation. And I knew that the same things had led up to his death, the convulsions, the hallucinations, and the fits of rage, and I knew that the same poison had killed both father and son, and that that must mean that the same person was to blame. But as Nicole stood beside me, trembling in shock and fear, I wondered how the same person could have wanted both Camberwells dead. And what of the other remaining Camberwell, the one who stood right beside me? What if the same individual would target her next?


	7. We Are For The Dark

Chapter 7: We Are For The Dark

" _The bright day is done,_

 _And we are for the dark."_

 _-William Shakespeare_

* * *

John advised Nicole to leave the room several times, but she would not. I knew that neither of the men were particularly inclined towards forcefully removing her, and so she was allowed to remain, although her presence was entirely ignored.

Not knowing what to do, she remained motionless just inside the doorway, purposely averting her eyes from the body of her father on the ground, rigid and frozen eternally in the act of some grotesque seizure or convulsion. I dared not say anything on the subject to her, but her continued presence was truthfully doing no additional good to the process of searching for clues as Holmes and my brother were doing, and it was obviously an act of sheer stubbornness on her part. I understood, of course. I had been both curious and stubborn enough to discreetly slip into the first crime scene I had seen, the victim also in my case being my own father. She wanted not as much to help examine the scene as to prove herself worthy of helping in other areas of the investigation.

After only a few moments of searching the room, during which he lowered himself flat on the floor and closely studied the area of the carpet which had been soiled with the spilled tea, taking repeated whiffs of it, Holmes sprang to his feet. "This isn't just a simple murder anymore," he said, affording a glance at the corpse. "Two are dead. We are dealing with a killer who is targeting multiple people. This is a far more serious case than I had previously anticipated. I'm going to send a telegraph to Lestrade. Perhaps he shall be kind enough to come up and assist us."

He departed the room after this announcement, and I was left with a very sinister feeling. Holmes was entirely correct. One murder was something I knew he had solved multiple times before, with assistance from the local constabulary. But multiple murders was far more serious, and dangerous. Even Holmes knew that he couldn't properly take on that kind of an investigation without the proper authorities. The risks were far too high, especially when we now had to protect someone who seemed to be a likely candidate for the next target, should there be further killings.

My gaze snapped to Nicole. "May I speak to you outside for a moment?" I asked.

She nodded, seeming more willing to listen to me than she was to either of the men, following me as I gestured towards the open doorway.

The hallway was quite refreshing, and it felt less oppressive than the bedroom had been, the presence of a horrifically positioned dead body adding to the atmosphere considerably. I took a cleansing breath and looked Nicole seriously in the eye. "Nicole, your father and your brother are both dead. You are the only member of the family that remains."

She ducked her head, fidgeting with the sleeve of her dress. "You think I may be the next target," she said softly, shivering and glancing behind her, already seeming a little frightened at the thought.

"I think that it is a definite possibility," I said slowly. "And it's very probable that you will be put into very close protection so that we can avoid you being poisoned as well. I want you to be prepared for that. And I must ask, is there anyone that you know of who has reason to want your family out of the way?"

Nicole shook her head slowly. "Most of the workers in town hate us, but they don't seem…capable, if you know what I mean."

"So you don't believe any of them would be capable of murder to this degree?"

"No. I doubt they would have the capacity for murder at all. They may not appreciate those of our class very much, but they're very passive."

I nodded, and was opening my mouth to reply when she added, "Although…"

"Yes?" I prompted her, raising my eyebrows. "Although what?"

She bit her lip, seeming indecisive for a moment before speaking. "There have been a rather unusual number of fights among the townsfolk of late."

"Unusually high?"

"Very. The past few months, there's been far more reports of violence in the town than anyone's heard of in years. Especially among those working directly in the mines. But I still doubt any of them would have enough anger to kill. The worst casualty from the recent violence is a few broken bones, as far as I've heard."

I didn't waste another moment before making the decision. "I'm going to find Holmes," I said. "And you're coming with me. I can't risk any harm befalling you, and I need you to tell him exactly what you told me."

"But didn't he go into town to send a telegraph?"

"Most certainly not. He'll have sent one of the house staff into town to do it. The constabulary will need alerted as well. He wouldn't leave the scene alone for that long. Not while any evidence is still fresh."

I grabbed Nicole's arm to pull her along with me and set off down the hall in the direction Holmes had gone. We walked briskly until we found him standing in the foyer, hands clasped behind his back and tersely waiting, presumably for the return of whatever messenger he had sent, and help from the local constabulary, which I doubt consisted of more than one or two officers and a local doctor.

"Holmes, Nicole – er, Miss Camberwell, sorry – has some information for you." I nodded at her. "Tell him what you told me," I instructed.

She took a breath and confidently repeated, word for word, everything she'd said to me about the townspeople and the recent violence.

"That's very interesting, oh, very interesting indeed!" Holmes exclaimed at the end, seeming very passionate about having new information to work with. I wasn't sure just how important it was, but I knew that it must tie in somehow.

"Holmes, what of the poison?" I asked. "It's likely that it was consumed through the tea, is it not?"

Holmes nodded. "It is indeed."

"Does that mean you'll be able to identify it?" Nicole asked.

He gave her a sort of look, as if he was still slightly annoyed with having to answer her as more than a client, but answered all the same. "Once the assistance from town arrives, I shall take a sample from what is left, and I will do whatever tests I am able to perform in order to identify its name and origin."

"Will Lestrade come?" I asked.

"I suspect we shall have an answer to that question by morning," Holmes replied, giving yet another glance towards the window, clearly hoping to see the light of a lantern being held aloft as the carriage containing the town constabulary rolled in.

"But in your opinion, will he come?"

"As I have often told Watson, Lestrade is the pick of a bad lot. He is by far the most sensible and intelligent of the Scotland Yarders. In all probability, he will come. Over the years during which I have worked with Scotland Yard, he has formed a sort of dogged loyalty to me. It would take a great deal indeed to keep him in London when I have promised him multiple murders in a small, secluded mining town. Yes, he will come. Now Emily, why don't you escort Miss Camberwell up to her bedroom? It is late, and likely these next few days will not be easy ones. You would both do well to get some rest."

I nodded and took Nicole's arm, turning to lead her up to her room, but stopped. "Nicole, why don't you go on up?" I asked. "There's something I wish to discuss with Mr. Holmes, I'll only be a moment."

Holmes gave me a stern look, probably for dismissing the precaution of keeping an eye on her at all times, and Nicole looked at me skeptically, but I nodded to her and she turned and started walking up the stairs, and as I watched, I could see that she did not tremble as she did so. Her father was gone. And however terrifying having a murderer targeting her family might be, she was safe.

Once she was safely out of sight, I turned to Holmes. "Are Simon Camberwell's friends from Eton still your main suspects?" I asked him.

"There's no reason at this stage of the investigation for them not to be," he replied. "They were still the last ones to see him alive, and –"

"No, they weren't," I interjected.

"Pardon?" Holmes asked inquisitively.

"According to what you said the pub owner told you, he was the last one to see Simon Camberwell alive."

A thoughtful look crossed over Holmes' face. "This is true," he said. "But Mr. Johnson, as far as we know, had no motive to kill either of the men. Young Mr. Camberwell's friends, however, were seen violently fighting with him just hours before his demise."

I fixed my eyes on the floor for a moment before raising them again to look at Holmes. "Have you any plans to speak with them?" I asked.

"I would prefer to wait until Lestrade arrives, in the event that at that time, proof becomes readily available, and an arrest must be made. Now please, see to it that Miss Camberwell stays safe. Do not lead her into danger. Surely you are already aware that she may very well be the next target."

"I am. And I have alerted her of that fact, as well. Very well, then. Goodnight, Holmes." I turned grimly and ascended the stairs, keeping my shoulders tense, for I knew that relaxation would dull my senses.

* * *

"Please stay with me tonight," Nicole had pleaded, so I had agreed to do so. Now I was sitting on the edge of her bed, as apprehensive as ever, but this time not without reason. Something was wrong. I could tell. Nicole was perfectly calm as she obliviously ranted to me, but I wasn't listening. My eyes were focused elsewhere. There were scuff marks on the windowsill, and little clumps of mud were visible on the window and the floor underneath. Someone had come in that way. Maybe they were still in the room.

My breath came quicker as my eyes flitted around the room for other indications or signs of movement before finally falling on the folding doors of the closet, which were partially open. In that moment I could have sworn I saw the sharp glint of an eye caught in the lamplight. In another instant it was gone.

 _Stop talking, stop talking,_ I willed Nicole. But instead I let the silence in the rest of the room drown out her voice. I could hear a sound. Heavy breathing. Was it coming from the intruder stashed in the closet or were they my own panicked breaths?

My senses were rife with danger, and with each heartbeat, coming more and more rapidly with every second, the feeling coursed through my veins and all through my body, sending a tingling shock into my fingers and toes. I reached out and grabbed Nicole by the arm, letting instinct take over my actions.

I was vaguely aware of her abruptly stopping in the middle of a sentence. "Emily, what –"

I didn't reply. If there was indeed someone hiding in the closet, I didn't want to confirm that I knew they were there.

Casting a warning glance in her direction, I quickly opened the door and pushed her out of the room.

I lingered in the doorway. My first thought was that we should run and get help. John and Holmes' rooms were just down the hall. By now they would both have retired and would surely be there. No. If we both left the room, the intruder could escape out through the window again, obviously having been discovered. So I turned to Nicole and hissed, "Run."

She stared at me, wide-eyed, for a moment, but didn't question me. And she seemed to understand the hidden meaning in the word, for she immediately turned and ran in the direction of the rooms down the hall where Holmes and John were staying. I did not stop to watch. I took a breath, confident in my ability to temporarily fight off whomever may be inside based on what Andrew had been teaching me, strode to the closet door, and wrenched it open.

I did not recognize the face inside, nor did I have time enough to think about it, for immediately something was clasped over my mouth. My stomach turned. It was sweet. Horribly sweet, like rotting fruit. Everything in my head turned to mist, and my eyes flickered closed, and all I could see around me was utter darkness.


	8. The Coward's Weapon

Chapter 8: The Coward's Weapon

" _The coward's weapon, poison."_

 _-John Fletcher_

* * *

It must have been some hours later that I awoke, and I slowly became aware that I was lying in my bed, and that my brother, Nicole, and Holmes were all standing around the room. Light was streaming through the window now. It must have been morning. But it had just been night. God, it was bright, and my mind still felt fuzzy. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but immediately John was pushing a glass of water in my face, taking my pulse and looking closely at my eyes as I drank.

"How do you feel?" he asked as I lowered the glass from my mouth, and I looked from Nicole, who was looking on anxiously, to Holmes, who was leaning on the wall by the door nonchalantly, trying not to show too much concern, but failing, judging from the way he kept surreptitiously sending quick glances in my direction, before I replied.

"My head hurts a little," I replied slowly, carefully forming the words in my still groggy mind, "but other than that I'm all right. What happened?"

"I found you on the floor after Miss Camberwell came to fetch me," replied John. "She said she didn't know what had happened, only that you had made it clear that she was to come get me. It must have been chloroform, from the sweet smell."

I forced myself upwards and put a hand to my forehead to massage it, desperately trying to remember what had happened the previous night. After a moment, the details came within my grasp, although parts of it were still lost in the fog. "There was an intruder in Nicole's room," I said haltingly. "He'd come in through the window and was hiding in the closet. I told her to run and then I went to open the closet and distract him, and then…" Here I trailed off, for my mind could not produce a single detail after I had confidently strode to the closet doors.

"And then what?" Holmes prompted eagerly, face shining at the knowledge that I must have seen the intruder's face. "What did he look like? Did he say anything to you? Watson, hand her paper, she can sketch him!"

I looked down at my hands, folded neatly on my lap, shaking my head. "I…I don't know. I can't remember the face."

"Well, I'm sure you can!" Holmes exclaimed. "Was it narrow or round? Did he have a short or long nose? What color were his eyes?"

"Holmes!" My brother interrupted his quick succession of questions sternly.

The detective snapped his mouth closed and looked inquisitively at John, demanding an explanation.

"Holmes, loss of short term memory is common with many sedatives and anaesthetics," John explained. "Chloroform being prominent among them. We're lucky she remembers as much as she does. Do not push the limits of her brain."

"I do apologize, Emily," Holmes said, softer.

I nodded at him. "It's quite all right," I said. "I'll certainly let you know if I remember anything."

Morning. It was morning. What seemed so very important about morning? I closed my eyes, thinking a moment, and finally the answer came to me. "Lestrade," I murmured under my breath, turning to Holmes. "Have you had an answer from Lestrade?"

He nodded in the affirmative. "It was brought to me less than half an hour ago. He said that he would be more than happy to hand off his cases to another inspector and that he'd be here by nightfall."

Nicole gave him a sideways look from where she was perched delicately on the plush stool in front of the bureau. "Aren't you going to tell her?"

I looked suspiciously from Nicole to Holmes, the peculiarity of this statement shooing away the remainder of the fog in my brain. "Tell me what?" I asked warily.

Holmes looked rather sheepish, refusing to lift his gaze from the vicinity of the worn edges of the carpet in the doorway. "Watson was attached to your side in case of your awakening, and an experiment I was conducting required an extra set of hands."

"We know what the poison is!" exclaimed Nicole, her eyes shining with a light I had only seen in her when she walked up to Andrew and I at the docks. I was struck by the fact that such a kindred spirit had been placed in my path. She thrived on adventure. Even in the face of family loss and tragedy, the centre of the mystery was where she belonged.

"Last night I took a sample of what was left of the late Mr. Camberwell's tea," said Holmes. "I observed from the stain on the carpet that what he was drinking was of the black tea variety, Masala Chai, to be precise. Its preparation is quite singular, in its true Eastern form. You see, the leaves must be –"

"Holmes, if you have written a monograph on the preparation of this tea, I'm sure we can all read it another time. Please, shorten your explanation. Emily is quite in need of some rest." John sounded incredibly short tempered. I wasn't all that surprised. If what Holmes had said was true, he had been awake watching me all night.

"I've just had hours of rest, I don't need more!" I protested.

Holmes sighed and continued his story, skipping the process of preparing Masala Chai tea, apparently much to his chagrin and my brother's pleasure. "The oxidized leaves from which the tea is made are of a distinct earthy colour. However, a handful of the ground leaves left in the bottom of the cup, having not been entirely strained out for the sake of flavour, were very different, a peculiar shade of dark green. So I procured a sample of the powder, and took it back to my chambers to conduct a few preliminary tests. The poison that was the cause of both deaths was a member of the _Solanaceae_ family. _Atropa Belladonna,_ more commonly known as Deadly Nightshade. It grows plentifully in a number of damp, wooded areas throughout Europe. You might even spot clusters of them in these very woods, were you to look. One leaf from the plant is fatal within a few hours, and poisoning causes the same symptoms which we have been able to deduce that both of our victims experienced prior to their deaths. Sensitivity to light and blurred vision would be two of the first symptoms to exhibit themselves, followed by loss of balance and a staggering gait, leading into violent hallucinations, slurred speech, convulsions, and finally death caused by spasms so severe that the respiratory system becomes rigid and unresponsive."

A chill went through me as I was afforded a clearer mental image of the process of death, fitting in the description Holmes gave with the story Mr. Johnson, the pub owner, had told him. "Does this help narrow down possible suspects?" I asked, in an attempt to shake the spine-chilling picture from my mind.

"If you are wondering if I have cleared Simon Camberwell's school mates as suspects, the answer is still no, and will likely remain so, in my opinion."

"But you haven't even spoken to them yet!" Nicole protested. "Once you do, you'll see that they're not capable of something like this."

"Miss Camberwell, I only form my opinions based on what the evidence tells me."

I furrowed my brow in surprise. John froze in the act of reaching for something in his bag, and I could tell that he had been taken aback by the very same thing as I.

One point that Sherlock Holmes was fiercely adamant about in the field of investigation was that one should never, in any circumstance, form an opinion, a theory, or a judgment before having all the evidence. And having not yet gotten the stories of his prime suspects and some of the most important witnesses, he certainly did not have all the evidence. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

John hesitantly pulled his hand back, folding his arms across his chest and turning fully towards the detective. "Holmes," he asked cautiously, "are you all right?"

"Quite fine, old fellow," Holmes said, although he sounded quite distant. Without another word, he stood fully up and walked briskly out of the room.

"…Am I missing something?" Nicole asked, looking back and forth between the two of us with raised eyebrows.

"Holmes has a habit of telling us never to form a hypothesis without first holding all the cards in our hand," I explained, my eyes still fixed on the hallway into which Holmes had so abruptly disappeared. "It's the only piece of advice that he stresses so…persistently."

"Then why on earth did he just attempt to defend an unfounded theory?" Nicole asked, turning to stare in Holmes' wake along with us.

John shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea."

* * *

Sherlock Holmes was, despite all his eccentricities, a creature of habit. He took trips to the British Museum every Friday at two o'clock to study their anthropological specimens and do whatever reading he liked in their private library. He kept to the same schedule of sleeping unless he was actively investigating a case. He always played the violin when thinking through the evidence in murder and forgery cases, and always smoked his pipe when thinking through robbery, domestic, and political cases. The pipe he smoked always depended on the day of week and the type of weather. From eight o'clock to eleven o'clock every morning he devoted his time to reading the dozens of London newspapers to which he subscribed. It took nothing short of a figurative - or, perhaps literal - explosion to throw him off of his self-made routine. The morals to which he clung were very clear cut, and I doubted there was anything which could blur the line between black and white in his mind. Something must be very wrong for him to completely disregard one of such morals.

A fog was rolling in over the moors and across the lawn as I mused about Holmes' irregular attitude. As the mist crept ever closer to the house, it swallowed everything in its path, until everything was blurred and distorted in shape.

I began to feel slightly shaky, and my eyes suddenly started to droop closed. John had been right. I did require more rest, besides the disturbingly deep slumber which had been induced by the chloroform. I stifled a yawn with my hand and sank into my desk chair, too weary to stand.

* * *

Some time later, I was awakened by a light shaking on my shoulder. I started and turned around, my eyelids still heavy.

The face that I saw was not the one I had been expecting to see. Long, shaggy hair drooped over his eyes, and his smirk was instantly identifiable. "Andrew?" I asked, squinting and suppressing a yawn.

"Good evening to you too," he replied.

"What in heaven's name are you doing here?" I asked, still thoroughly confused.

He shrugged. "I was passing by Inspector Lestrade's desk last night and saw he had a telegram from Sherlock Holmes. I read it, and was, of course, concerned about you, seeing as Holmes spoke of multiple murders. So, I bought a ticket on the only train coming to North Yorkshire today and rode up here with Lestrade."

"So you weren't invited?" I guessed.

Andrew emitted a small snort. "Heavens, no. Don't be ridiculous. I seldom require an invitation to make up my mind."

I couldn't hold back a giggle as I stood up to more properly greet him. "It's very sweet, you know," I said, reaching out to embrace him.

He enclosed my waist gently in his arms and pulled me closer to him. "Yes, I know," he murmured.

I let his warmth surround me for a moment before I pulled back to study his face. "Were Holmes and Lestrade pleased to know of your presence?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Andrew chuckled softly. "Lestrade told me I should have stayed in London, and Holmes told me I wasn't qualified enough to be here, and it was bad enough that he already had to involve two girls. Oh, about that –"

"You met Nicole?" I asked.

"Yes, she was downstairs with Holmes and your brother to greet us," he said. "What was she doing at the West India Docks that day?"

I shook my head. "All I'm going to say at present is that her spirit is as strong and curious as my own." Suddenly a thought struck me, and I backed fully out of his embrace.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Andrew, none of them know about us," I told him. "Aren't they wondering why you're here?"

Realization dawned on his face. "Well, I can't say that I think any of them would be especially surprised," he admitted. "And from the curious look Holmes gave me, I'd wager that he's already deduced it."

My face darkened as the reality of the situation swept over me once again, and the excitement of unexpectedly seeing Andrew was washed away. I sank slowly onto the bed. "Andrew, this family is being targeted," I said. "Both the father and the son have been poisoned."

"Poisoned?" Andrew's eyes lifted in alarm.

"Yes," I replied darkly. " _Atropa Belladonna_ , Holmes said. Andrew, I'm frightened," I confessed. "Mr. Camberwell and his son are both dead. Nicole might be targeted next, and something's wrong with Holmes. He's not himself. He's not –"

Andrew stopped me by placing a finger to my lips. "Shhh," he said quietly, drawing me closer. "It's all right. Poison is the weapon of cowards, you know. Those too scared to get their hands dirty. They can cause pain and death without soiling their hands and watching the light go out in their victim's eyes. The danger is not as great as it would be in the case of shootings or stabbings. No, this killer is not to be feared. We can use his fear against him."

I knew that Andrew was right. But he was also wrong. The killer wouldn't come out in the open. But that didn't necessarily make it easier to catch him. He was a silent killer, as fluid and dark as the shadows. He might be anywhere. If anything, his secrecy made him all the more dangerous.


	9. Present Fears

Chapter 9: Present Fears

" _Present fears are less than horrible imaginings."_

 _-William Shakespeare_

* * *

The fog did not lift. It only got thicker. Soon enough, nothing could be seen, not even the misguided shapes that had been there before. Everything was shrouded in a grey, oppressive mist, floating over us like some ghost drawn forevermore to places of gloom.

After dinner, there being a larger number of us, we filed into the drawing room instead of immediately retiring to our rooms.

"Miss Camberwell, did your father have a will?" asked Lestrade, who was pacing near the hearth with his hands in his breast pockets.

Nicole averted her eyes. "Not that I am aware of," she said quietly. "He had no affections, and the majority of his time was poured into the mines. Everything else was pointless to him. Even – especially – his own family."

"What was his motivation for investing so much in the mines?" Holmes asked. A glint was in his eye, but somehow I was afraid to look upon his face for more than a second after his strange behaviour.

"I couldn't say," replied Nicole, shaking her head. "My grandfather was the one who first owned the mine. It's been my father's ever since he died a few years before I was born."

"How did he die?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure what made me ask it. Something was nagging at the back of my mind. Something about the mines and the violence among the townspeople that Nicole had mentioned.

"Consumption, I was told," Nicole answered, looking at me with curiosity in her eyes. "Why? Is that important?"

Holmes looked at me in the same way. "I doubt her late grandfather had anything to do with all of this, Emily."

Lestrade stopped his pacing precipitously. It didn't take any great leap of logic to realize that he had noticed that something was amiss with Holmes as easily as we had. "Holmes…" he started, but did not make any move to finish the sentence. His brow was furrowed in suspicion.

"Yes, what is it, Lestrade? Do make some effort to complete your sentences in a proper grammatical fashion. Kindly don't leave us hanging."

This alarmed Lestrade even more, and as I shifted my gaze to John, I could see that he was just as shocked. While Holmes occasionally slighted Lestrade and the other Scotland Yarders, he never lashed out verbally. Something was really wrong, and from the sharp intake of breath beside me, it was obvious that Andrew now realized it too. I was thankful, for his shushing of me earlier when I tried to tell him earlier had not been comforting to me in the least.

John gave the detective a look that was normally reserved for when he returned from investigations in the middle of the night with blood dripping down his face. "Holmes, you are not acting like yourself. Might I suggest that you retire early tonight? Miss Camberwell has lost her family, and they must be buried within the next couple of days. Your attitude is not helping her grieving process, nor your own investigation."

Holmes gave my brother a piercing look and rose from his seat, departing the room with the grandiose drifting motion that was adopted by so many birds of prey.

"What the devil's the matter with him?" Lestrade asked, looking after Holmes with wonder in his voice.

"We haven't the foggiest idea," I explained. "But it is something, and not something to just ignore until it passes. He's holding onto biased theories as well."

A vacant expression had crossed Nicole's face, and as I looked into her eyes, she seemed not even to notice. "It's the mines," she whispered.

"Pardon?" Lestrade asked, turning to look at her, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

I could all but see her consciousness slowly drifting back into the room, and she took a deep breath, pulling her sleeves down further and not meeting anyone's gaze, looking instead into the glowing embers of the fireplace. "It's nothing," she said, and while her tone was enough to convince the others, I looked into her eyes and knew that it was not true. Something was bothering her deeply. I would inquire about it at a later time.

"I think it's obvious that Holmes' investigative skills are suffering at present, for whatever reason," I said instead. "But that does not change the fact that there is a killer on the loose. And that killer will not be brought to justice while he has his sights set so stubbornly on Simon Camberwell's friends. I think we should launch something of an investigation without him."

"You jest!" Lestrade said with an incredulous laugh. "We can't possibly solve it without his help."

"I'm sure we can do something to that end, at least," said John. "Scotland Yard does it, so I am sure that we can do just as much."

Another laugh elicited from the London Inspector. "Doctor Watson," he said gravely, "we at the Yard hate to admit it, but our success record without Mr. Holmes is dismal indeed. We can't do a whit without him."

"That doesn't mean we can't do it," I pointed out. "For goodness' sake, Lestrade, you've known Holmes for how long?"

Lestrade furrowed his brow and counted off on fingers for a moment before answering. "Why, nearly ten years now!"

I turned to my brother. "John, you've lived with him for how many years?"

"Six," he returned promptly, not even blinking. He had obviously been thinking of the year quite recently, for he did not even hesitate a fraction of a second.

"And I may have only been acquainted with him for a little under two months, but I've picked up a great deal, and I was no stranger to logical reasoning balanced with intuition before coming to Baker Street. Nicole isn't dull in any sense of the word either. And Andrew? Regardless of what you say about his experience and qualifications, Lestrade, he has spent just as much time as you soaking up the police environment. None of us are imbeciles. There's no reason we can't do this."

"There is one stipulation," John said after I was finished, crossing his arms and casting a glance towards the door as though Holmes himself may be eavesdropping on our covert conversation.

"What's that?" I inquired.

"Holmes can't under any circumstances know that we're investigating without him."

"Well how in God's name can we expect to be able to keep that from him?" Lestrade asked, a harsh and disbelieving tone in his voice. "He's bloody Sherlock Holmes. If he can tell by a scuff on a man's finger the last time he was out gambling, then sure as hell he'll know if we're withholding anything from him."

"I have a lot of experience watching dealings with diplomats," Andrew said, speaking for the first time, and I turned to see him leaning casually against a panel of bas relief depicting what appeared to be the Spanish Armada. His hair wouldn't lay flat, as usual, and he had obviously long ago abandoned any attempts to discipline it that he had been raised to follow. Something about his quiet and relaxed demeanour made my stomach churn lightly as if dozens of butterflies were fluttering around inside it. It caused a warm feeling to spread all throughout my abdomen and chest cavity. I quickly averted my eyes from him, for fear the bubbling heat rising inside me would flush my cheeks.

"Go on," I said, nodding to him once I had composed myself for a short moment.

"Often our government will be required to withhold certain information from foreign dignitaries with whom we are liaising," he elaborated, "not for any malicious purpose, but because we are protecting them or ourselves. By doing this, they are involved, but we play a different hand when they're not looking."

Nicole cocked her head in confusion. "But I get the impression that Sherlock Holmes is always looking."

But I knew exactly what Andrew was trying to say. "Holmes is affected by something, Nicole," I said in response to her statement. "He's far less conscientious than usual. What Andrew is saying is that Holmes needs to feel as if he's in charge. Of course he won't be as suspicious if we keep him comfortable in a leading position. We let him lead, and we follow. He won't notice anything amiss with our actions in the background because he's accustomed to leading and dismissing anything below that. That leaves us free to commence an investigation of our design. Trying to butt heads with him on his theories won't cause anything but more friction. If we just let him think whatever on earth he's thinking, we'll be free to take our own courses of action."

I shivered as I said this. I may be unorthodox in my levels of independence, but I too was accustomed to being under Holmes' lead on cases, however few I'd encountered so far with him. This was different than what I had encountered in the Moriarty and Ivanov cases. In those, I had a rather painful suspicion that Holmes knew exactly what I had kept from him, though whether or not that was any fault of mine, I would probably never know. This time, he must not know. As strange and foreign as the feeling seemed at the time, I feared what would happen if he did.

* * *

I knew Nicole was not in her room. I had been on the verge of drifting into some semblance of sleep when I heard the creak of what could only have been her door across the hallway and seconds later soft footfalls moving towards the stairs leading down to the ground floor.

Alarm shook every part of my mind, but at first I was too drowsy to realize why. Whether or not Holmes' judgment was logical and trustworthy, he had still placed Nicole under my personal protection. He had trusted me with her life. Her sneaking out of her room and off to some unknown place in the middle of the night was certainly not safe in any regard, especially considering that an intruder had been far too close for comfort only last night. Then again, she was a kindred spirit of mine, and I knew that in her place, I would do the exact same thing. A bit of space to breathe and release from omnipresent constraint trumped a risk of being murdered. Especially when said risk of being murdered felt too surreal to truly be anything of this world. But a desire for space did not change the fact that her experience in protecting herself from harm was scant at best. She wasn't even aware of the dangers of wearing upper class clothing into the slums.

Once I was filled with enough adrenalin to comprehend all of this, I tossed back the covers and got out of bed, pulling a candle and match from the drawer of the desk in the corner so that I could see where I was going. I took the empty candleholder from the top of the desk and placed the candle I held in it, fumbling to light the match in the darkness. After wasting a precious moment, I had the candle lit and cautiously left my room, letting the fluttering flame guide my way down the dark and still unfamiliar hallway.

Slowly, I made my way to the stairs. A door squeaked open, and I started so much that I feared my candle might snuff itself out. In the dim light, I could barely make out Andrew's ruffled hair. I squinted and moved the flame closer to him. He was in a nightshirt, and had hastily pulled on trousers underneath. "What's going on?" he whispered, sounding even more groggy than me.

"I'm not sure," I replied, suppressing a harsh shiver as a draft swept through the corridor, "but Nicole just left her room and went downstairs. I'm going to make sure she's not in danger."

"Where did she go?" he asked, concern and alarm flitting across his face, still half bathed in shadows.

I was about to open my mouth to reply that I didn't know when another draft from behind me made me turn and look at the window.

The night outside was as thick and black as fresh pitch. There were no stars and there was no moon. The fog was still hanging over the land, cloaking everything in secrecy. I felt a strange pull inviting me to it, begging that I would come and be a part of the mystery. And then I knew. It wasn't an intuitive guess. I knew. "She's outside," I said finally, turning back to Andrew.

The alarm left his face and was replaced by unbridled fear. "Let's go," he said, putting a hand on my back and gently guiding me down the stairs. I was stumbling over the hem of my long nightgown. I couldn't move fast enough. With a glance at my feet, Andrew realized this and took my hand instead, taking the steps two at a time and pulling me after him.

I stopped him at the landing. "Here, take the candle," I whispered, holding it out to him. "I'll trip if I don't hold up my skirt."

He nodded and took the candleholder from me, and I busied my right hand with holding up my nightgown off of the ground. Satisfied, Andrew pulled me on down the rest of the stairs and then towards the front doors.

The air was far colder down here, where the floor was stone and continuous drafts from beneath the door seeped into the house and settled into the very foundation, soaking through my stockings and chilling me to the bone.

I shivered, but had no time to stop and reflect on the temperature, for Andrew was at the door, pushing it open and dragging me out into the cold night air with him.

Nicole was sitting on the steps in front of the house. She didn't start or turn around or say anything when the door opened, she only hung her head in disappointment that she'd been discovered so quickly.

"Nicole?" Andrew said to her softly. "It's not safe to be out here. Come back inside with us."

She made no reply.

I pulled my hand out of his grasp and descended the steps until I was right beside her, putting my hand gently on her shoulder. "Nicole, Andrew is right," I said. "I'm supposed to be keeping you safe. We should go back inside."

She lifted her head to look at me. Fear was in her eyes. It was the kind of fear that was absolutely heartbreaking to see. It was the sort of fear you feel when you find yourself directly in the middle of your worst nightmare. When you find yourself in the midst of a battle you never wanted to fight. One you'd been running from for what seemed like an eternity. It was a resigned fear. It was misery and impending doom. "It's the mines," she replied simply, echoing her words of earlier this evening.

I turned to Andrew. "Go on inside," I told him. I'll be there in a moment."

He looked wary, and rightfully so. "Emily…"

"Go." I fixed him with a stern look. He knew better than to protest and tightened his lips, turning to go wait for me inside.

I gingerly sat down on the stone steps beside Nicole, wincing as the bitter cold met the thin cloth covering my body. Despite the fact that I could already feel the loss of sensation in my hindquarters, I did my best to ignore the chill. "What do you mean, about the mines?" I asked her.

She drew a shaky breath, coughing as her lungs expelled the frigid air she had tried to inhale. "There's stories," she said finally, her voice hushed, as though some consciousness in the fog or the trees might be listening. "The people in the town would never talk to me, but I was around enough to hear them talk. They said that something was disturbed when my grandfather first opened the mines. No one knows what, but they say something lives down there, under the earth, and that it lay imbedded in the rocks for hundreds of years. I never believed it, but something killed both of the men who would have had authority to keep the mines open, and something's affecting Holmes' mind."

I confess that I could not help but shudder at the thought of what she was saying. I had myself been raised on mysterious tales of monsters and demons living deep inside the hollows of the earth, but every logical part of my brain dismissed it immediately. I turned to face her, and I took both of her hands in mine. "Nicole, I want you to listen to me. I know how hard it is, what you're going through. You've just lost all you had left of a family. But it was not some monster, some mere legend that did this to them. You heard what Holmes said. From what I heard, you saw the results for yourself. It was poison that killed them. Monsters wouldn't have any need of poison, if I may so boldly say so. This is the work of no monster. It's only a mere mortal, I can assure you. You must look at this another way. You must focus on the logical scenario, the one far brighter and less terrifying to you. A monster I doubt we'd have the resources to beat. But a killer we do."

From the way Nicole gave me a shaky smile, it appeared that I had convinced her, at least for the present. Now if only I could convince every fibre of myself.

I helped her stand and led her back to the door. But as I did, a thought struck me. The legend Nicole had recounted to me told of something wanting the mines closed. She was entirely correct when she said that the two men dead were the ones with the power to keep the mines open – the owner and his heir. Someone did want the mines closed. And they were willing to kill to see it done.


	10. Divine Prerogative

Chapter 10: Divine Prerogative

" _Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason."_

 _-Albert Pike_

* * *

The next day, Oliver and Simon Camberwell, father and son, were laid to rest in a family plot a few hundred yards behind Rosedale Abbey.

The day was once again cool, grey, and windy, but the fog had lifted, and our line of vision was clear as we solemnly made our way out of the house to meet the wagon carrying the coffins.

A persistent wind made the trees bow before us, as if in respect for the dead, and from somewhere in the woods, a crow screeched, spurring a dozen others to echo it in unison. I was glad that I had packed a black satin dress, for otherwise I would have felt very improper and out of place.

Andrew's hand rested on my back as the six of us came to stop at the base of a hill, where two fresh holes had been dug on either side of an already existing gravestone which bore the name Mary Elizabeth Camberwell. There was what appeared to be some kind of flower lying beside it, although it was not fresh, and had long ago withered and shriveled up. Nicole glanced at it and immediately bent down to pick it up, holding it tenderly in her cupped hands as she returned to my other side, taking a steadying breath and squaring her shoulders as the priest from town opened his Bible and began to speak.

I was not listening particularly closely to what he was saying, for upon observing the freshly dug rectangular holes in the ground and the two black coffins that corresponded to them, a thought struck me. One that I had never before considered. I had not attended my step-father's funeral. Certainly none of the Moriarty brothers had attended it, therefore Ariana and I were the only people who could've been expected to. So what had happened? Had there even been a service, or had his body simply been dumped into the ground without any pomp and circumstance whatsoever?

It wasn't that it made any specific difference to me, especially not now. That was two months in the past, and as I had previously thought very much about, I had not particularly cared for my stepfather in any way. Not any more than I did about any other person. As far as I was concerned, Ariana and I's mother had raised us, and he had merely given us a house in which to live. He wasn't even my father by blood. I didn't _love_ him. Not in the same way I had loved Mother. So while I wasn't devastated upon realizing that I had not been present at his funeral, it still felt wrong. He was not my real father, but he was still the one I had known for my entire life. My hands were beginning to shake as the flood of thoughts and mixed emotions made the healing scratches on my arm itch and ache, and I could see Andrew's eye on me. He gently and quietly removed his hand from my back and took my hand into it, squeezing softly. Its presence made me feel altogether less incomplete, and the tremors ceased almost immediately.

The words of the priest flowed over me as he recited a final prayer over the coffins and two men who I assumed had been summoned from the town lifted the coffins and lowered them into the ground.

Suddenly, there came a commotion from the woods. I heard branches snap as something lumbered through the trees towards us. A flurry of crows rose from the ground, taking off in all directions, frightened off by the movement below.

A man ran into the clearing, jacket askew and out of breath. He stopped for a moment, staring at us. We were too taken aback by this unexpected appearance that none of us said anything. His eyes fell upon the coffins and he let out a cry, running forward until he was at the very edge of the grave.

Nicole rushed to his side, taking his arm and trying to pull him back. "Edward, step back, please," she pleaded, and from the tone in her voice I knew that the grief she had been masking was breaking through.

Edward, who must have been the friend of whom she had spoken in her letter, relaxed a little upon feeling the presence of her hand on his arm. He turned and embraced her tightly, closing his eyes and letting tears fall down his face.

"Miss Camberwell, who is this?" asked Holmes tersely. John slapped him lightly on the arm, clearly attempting to convey that this was a most inappropriate moment, but he did not acknowledge it.

Nicole slipped out of the embrace, turning to us and wiping a single tear from her eye. "This is Edward Jamison," she said. "He was Simon's closest friend from Eton. Edward, this is Sherlock Holmes. He's come from London with Doctor Watson and Miss Emily to find out what happened to Simon. And that's Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and Mr. Andrew Lynch."

"Sherlock Holmes!" Edward said with a weak laugh, composing himself quickly, as all men were taught to do. "By God, it's an honor! My father is acquainted with the Greens, I believe the wife used to be called Stoner, and she speaks very highly of you indeed, sir!"

He stepped forward to shake Holmes' hand, but the detective only looked on with disdain until Edward thought better of the gesture and backed off. "Mr. Jamison, how did you know that Simon Camberwell had died?" he asked, suspicion tingeing the edges of his voice.

Andrew muttered some sort of a prayer as he continued to keep hold of my hand, and I was inclined to offer up the same prayer, for Holmes was still fixed on the idea of one or more of Simon's friends being responsible for his death. I inhaled sharply. He might not be entirely in the wrong. How else could Edward have learned of Simon's death?

"I sent him a telegram, of course!" replied Nicole, and I exhaled in relief.

Holmes turned on Nicole. "You sent out information about your brother's murder? If they're the guilty party, heaven knows what preparations for their escape they could have made with the knowledge of what we know!"

Edward's mouth fell open in shock. "You-you think I was responsible for this?" he asked, anger and hurt in his voice. He gestured wildly at the grave. "You think I had a part in putting my closest friend into a coffin? You think I would do that to Nicole? He was like a brother to me, you bastard!"

Nicole hurriedly stepped in between the two men, as both of them appeared ready to throw punches. "Gentlemen, please, I hardly think a graveside is the proper place for this!"

"She's right, Holmes, let's take this inside," said John. There was a very clear warning in his voice. Were Holmes to speak out of turn again next to these open graves, he would regret it.

Holmes looked from John, to Nicole, to Edward, seething and defiant, before turning and walking stiffly and briskly back towards the house. Left awkwardly standing in his wake, the rest of us had no choice but to silently follow.

I glanced behind me at the edge of the woods, for I felt a strange sensation. It was the prickly feeling of eyes watching me. Indeed, I saw a shabbily dressed man of above average height peering out from behind a tree. There was something incredibly familiar to me about him. What was it? I was about to open my mouth to tell Andrew, who was walking just in front of me, but the face vanished. But who was it, and why had I recognized them? I must have caught a glimpse of them when we arrived in town, I decided, turning to face ahead once again and trying to think nothing of it.

* * *

Edward Jamison wasn't tall, but he wasn't by any means short, either. His head rested a good three or four inches above Andrew's, but he was far shorter than Holmes. His hair was red, and held itself stubbornly into a curly mop atop his head. His eyes were bright and sparkling with curiosity about the world, and he spoke in a most educated way, sounding extremely interested in things he did not know much about and equally passionate about everything that he did know about.

"What kind of experiments usually help lead you to a killer?" he asked Holmes during dinner.

I examined Holmes' demeanour with bated breath. Edward was very eager to intrude upon his methods, and this was exactly the sort of thing which Holmes detested – especially when he was already in a foul mood.

"Mr. Jamison," Holmes replied in cool tones, "I am not pleased about your presence. I do not wish to disclose my methods to you at this time." He stopped to eat a forkful of food, and then continued. "Now, I trust you'll be staying in town overnight and will return to your own place of residence in the morning?"

"Mr. Holmes, I thought Nicole would have informed you. I'll be staying here."

Holmes rapidly turned to Nicole. "Not possible. His name has not yet been cleared. Having any suspect under this roof is a potential danger to you."

Nicole stiffly straightened in her seat, hesitating before meeting Holmes' eye with a ferocious glint. "I believe I am now the only possible head of this household," she said firmly. "If I say that Edward stays, then he stays. That is the final word."

"Miss Camberwell, you are under our protection!" protested Holmes, tossing his napkin down onto the table. "It is our duty – my duty – to eliminate any potential threats to your safety."

"No matter what you say, Mr. Holmes, no matter what sort of grand delusion you're under, Edward is not a threat to me. You are not a god. Sometimes you are mistaken. Edward stays. I will not discuss the matter with you any further."

A hushed silence fell over the table. After a moment, Holmes pushed back his chair and stood, his plate of food only half finished. "I shall be excused," he said. "I have a murderer to catch, and much thinking to do."

"Is he always so…stubborn?" asked Edward after Holmes left, and although his voice was hushed, as if Holmes might still be within earshot, it still retained the permanently eager and entirely intrigued air with which he had spoken everything since recovering from the shock of seeing his best friend's coffin. I had to admit that his general attitude was slightly getting on my nerves.

"No," replied John with a sigh. "He most certainly is not. I must apologize for his shortness. He hasn't seemed himself these past few days."

"Does anyone else here believe that I was responsible for Simon's death?" Edward asked, pushing around the remainder of the food on his plate a little uneasily.

"Not in the least, Mr. Jamison," I responded quickly. "We spoke about it following one of Mr. Holmes' outbursts. I for one can say that your reaction at the funeral today was genuine. I've been lied to a great many times…" I paused, carefully considering whether or not to also say that I had also done a great deal of lying. I didn't. "…and I know what a rehearsed or fabricated reaction sounds like. It takes a lot of experience and the right kind of person to tell a lie that passes inspection, and if you'll allow me to say so, you most definitely are not such a person. That grief was genuine. And that means that you are innocent."

Edward nodded, muttering his thanks. It was obvious that Holmes' suspicion was making him more than uncomfortable, as it left him without his continuous air of enthusiasm.

"Perhaps you can help us, Mr. Jamison," said Andrew softly, pushing back his emptied plate and eyeing Edward evenly.

Edward looked up sharply. "Help you with what, Mr. Lynch? We have already established my innocence. I do not think there is much more help I can give you."

" _We_ have established your innocence, Mr. Jamison. Holmes has not, and does not at present appear likely to," John said with a heavy sigh. "You may have realized that this greatly impedes the progress of the investigation. We are attempting to rectify this on our own. Holmes is not willing to give you a chance to tell us anything but how you did it. We are. We know that you didn't kill Simon Camberwell or his father. You were, however, one of the last people to see him alive."

"This means you have a side of the story," I interjected, giving John a sideways glance to make sure that he was not offended by my interruption. He nodded, so I continued. "We are willing to let you tell us your side of the story. In return, we will tell you everything we know, in the event that that supplements any additional information. Do you think you can do that, Mr. Jamison?"

He nodded rapidly. "Most certainly. Anything to help find who did this to Simon. I…believe I've lost the remainder of my appetite. Shall we adjourn this to the drawing room, and you can tell me what you know first?"

I shook my head. "Certainly we can adjourn to the drawing room," I said, "but you will tell us what you know first, so that what we tell you does not unfairly influence it. We do not believe in your guilt, but we must make sure that the truth does not get muddled."

Edward nodded his agreement, and we all stood. Nicole rang the bell for our plates to be taken away, and we silently made our way to the study through the door on the right side of the dining room.

* * *

"Mr. Jamison, tell us what you remember from the night you last saw Simon," Lestrade said, lighting a cigarette with a match from his pocket as we settled in our seats.

"Well, we'd all met in town – Simon, Patrick, Leslie, Victor, and myself – and we were all at the _Black Kettle_ for a couple of rounds of drinks. We were discussing the deal of a few months ago –"

"What deal?" Andrew broke in, his eyes narrowed.

"You-you didn't know about it?" Edward asked in surprise.

We all shook our heads in unison.

"Please elaborate," I prompted.

"About four months ago, the mines were in deep trouble. Wait, Nicole, didn't you know something about it?" Edward looked at her curiously as she drew back.

She lowered her gaze. "All I knew was that both Simon and my father were very much thinly stretched for a time," she said softly. "Then you and the others came for a few days, and when you left, everything was all right again."

"The funding for the mines was running out," explained Edward. "They could not find any of the ores. They needed to dig deeper, but permission and money from the government was needed to do so. Mr. Camberwell had gone to parliament, but they refused to give him more funding and equipment. He refused to tap into his own fortune, but they said he must come up with the money on his own. So Simon contacted us. Mr. Camberwell made us a deal. If we invested some of our money into helping to keep the mines open, he would split the profits made from the new ores they discovered with us."

"And have those profits been worth the investment?" asked Lestrade.

"Very much so," replied Edward with a nod. "When they were digging, they uncovered a supply of lead ore. It's very rare in its natural form, especially here. It could be sold to manufacturers for quite a high price."

Lestrade looked between us. "What do you think? A rival mining magnate?" he asked.

Andrew shook his head. "No, these are family owned mines, not corporate. If a rival company wished to gain control, all they would have had to do was con Mr. Camberwell into selling, or offer him a higher price. Nicole, would your father have taken a higher offer than the profits he was making in exchange for letting go of the mines?"

Nicole gave a half smirk. "Did my father seem like a sentimental man to you?" she countered wryly.

Andrew nodded affirmatively. "Let's take that as a yes. That's not a plausible reason for murder."

"We understand the deal now," I said to Edward. "You can continue with your story."

"As I said, we were meeting at the _Black Kettle_ and discussing the deal we'd agreed to and the profits we were making from it. We had about four or five rounds apiece, and then left the pub."

"You were fighting outside the pub," said Nicole, a slight tremor in her voice as the circumstances of her brother's last hours were laid in front of her. "What were you fighting about?"

"It was mostly between Simon and I," admitted Edward, fiddling with the lapel of his jacket. "I will openly confess to you that we were all quite inebriated by this point. I had somehow come to the hazy conclusion that Simon was stealing a portion of the profits I was supposed to be receiving. I threatened him, and he pulled his own knife on me. I'm not quite sure that he knew what he was doing, not that any of us were completely in control of our actions to a certain degree, but he was waving the knife dangerously close to my throat. I took it from his hands, and he lunged, trying to get it back from me. I slashed him across the shoulder with it. I wasn't thinking. I was only trying to warn him to back off."

The poison had been on the knife. Edward had slashed Simon with the knife. But he hadn't killed him. He was innocent. Had Simon himself put it on the knife? Was it meant to kill Edward? No, that couldn't have been it. Simon had no motive to kill Edward, or vice versa. So if neither of them had tipped the knife with the poison, then who had?

"So what is it that you know?" Edward asked uneasily after a short time, looking at me with slight suspicion as I drew back with the brevity of my thought.

I shook off the urgency of the question that would put an end to our entire predicament and took a breath before answering his inquiry. "We know that both Simon Camberwell and his father are dead. They were both poisoned. Holmes has determined that the poison used was _Atropa Belladonna._ We believe…" I paused, debating whether or not to tell him about the knife. I decided that I had to be honest with him. He had been more than honest with us, and given that, I would be consumed with guilt if I withheld such a detail from him. "…that in the case of Simon Camberwell, the knife you slashed him with had been coated in the poison."

I knew at once that despite my morality, saying this had been a very unwise choice. Edward lowered his head into his hands, rocking back and forth in internal agony. John gave me a harsh look.

"Oh, God, I killed him!" Edward bewailed, gesturing at himself and looking up at us with wild eyes. "Do you not see? I killed him! I slashed him with that knife!"

"You did not kill him, Mr. Jamison," John said firmly. "You had no part in putting the poison there. It is not your fault."

"Well then how the deuce did it get there?" Edward moaned despairingly.

John opened his mouth to reply, but I held up a hand. "John, I think he has a point."

"What?" John narrowed his eyes and cocked his head slightly, giving me a strange look.

"You can't possibly be reconsidering Mr. Jamison as a suspect!" Lestrade said incredulously.

"Emily, we already established that it couldn't have been him!" Nicole exclaimed.

I heard Andrew inhale sharply beside me, and I knew that he had figured out what I was saying. "No, she's right," he said in wonder.

"How _did_ it get there?" I asked, repeating Edward's question. "Well, the killer would have put it there, obviously. But how would he have known that Edward would slash Simon with it? That was an unforeseen circumstance. We could argue that Simon was not the intended victim, perhaps that Edward was. But again, how could the killer have foreseen whether or not Simon would cut Edward with it? It's impossible, unless Simon put it there himself. And that would be completely illogical, for Simon had absolutely no motive to want Edward dead. If neither of them put it there, and the killer could not have predicted the way things would unfold, then perhaps the poison was never on the knife at all."

"Well, then where the devil was it?" Lestrade asked.

"In his drink," blurted Edward. "It must have been in his drink."

"Mr. Johnson," Nicole murmured. She looked up sharply. "Do you think it was him?"

"But what would his motive be?" Andrew asked.

"He hates my family," Nicole suggested.

"Nicole, I don't think your brother and father were killed because they belonged to this family," I said, shaking my head and voicing the suspicion that had been in my head since I had spoken with her on the front steps the previous night. "I think they were killed because of the mines. Someone wants the mines closed. They killed both the owner and the heir apparent. They weren't crimes of hate. They were revenge, or opportunity."

"But why would Johnson want the mines to close?" asked Edward. "He doesn't work there, he only owns the pub. If the mines closed, there would be nothing to keep everyone in town, and it would hurt his business."

"Then maybe it's not him," I said, shrugging.

"Who else might it be?" asked John.

An idea was milling around in my head, but I dared not voice it. Not in front of everyone. Especially not in front of Edward. So instead of sharing my theory, I simply shook my head. "I don't know, but it's late. We should retire. If we're all up late tomorrow, Holmes will be suspicious."

Edward put up a hand. "Wait. What's the matter with him, anyway?"

Before I could answer, Holmes himself appeared in the doorway. "I thought I should inform you that I am going for a stroll," he said in his usual patronizing tone.

"Mr. Holmes, pray tell, have you gone for any other strolls recently?" asked Edward before he could walk away.

"Mr. Jamison, I fail to see the importance of such a question," said Holmes coldly, turning and starting for the door.

I looked quickly to Edward's face. The glint was back in his eye. He was on to something. "Holmes, answer the question!" I said forcefully.

The tone in my voice was enough to make him turn around in surprise. "If you are so insistent upon knowing, yes. Two nights ago I went out to clear my head and think the case over. That is why I was not in my room when Nicole came to report the intruder, and why she had to go on to Watson's room instead."

"Mr. Holmes, where did you go walking?" asked Edward warily.

Holmes threw up his hands in exasperation. "I still hold that this has no bearing on anything, but it was near the entrance of the mines. I was observing the equipment used in the digging process and attempting to determine what was being mined."

"It's lead ore," replied Edward, his lips tight.

Holmes waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, I know that! Pray tell me what is your point!"

"Lead ore is rare in its natural form," Edward explained. "It is also highly toxic, as I am sure you are aware, Mr. Holmes."

"I am aware," replied Holmes, slower now, his brow furrowed.

"And symptoms of lead poisoning include but are not limited to impaired mental agility and an increase of violence and aggression," Edward elaborated.

Nicole inhaled sharply. "The workers in town!" she exclaimed.

John took a hesitant step forward. "And Holmes."

Holmes let out an incredulous laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Watson! I have not been affected by the lead fumes near the mines!"

"Holmes, let go of the preposterous concept that you are immune to things that affect other people," I admonished. "Much as Nicole said earlier this evening, you are not a god. You are mortal. You are vulnerable. What Edward is saying presents a great possibility."

"Stay here, everyone," John muttered, walking briskly out of the room. "Especially you, Holmes."

He returned a moment later carrying a small glass containing water into which an off-white powder was quickly dissolving. "Drink this, Holmes, and retire to bed immediately. This should flush any effects of the lead out of your body, provided you help it along by resting. Now as Emily was saying before, it is late, and it would be a good idea for all of us to retire."

Holmes downed the liquid with more than a little annoyance, and soon after, we were all ascending the stairs to our bedrooms.

Once I had readied myself for sleep, I was glad to feel the blankets encasing me and the pillow underneath my head. As sleep was beginning to overtake me, my overtaxed mind began thinking again of spots of blood adorning my arm, like a morbid pattern of lace against my fair skin. The still healing scratches on my arm began to ache and burn with the thought, and as I curled into myself I couldn't keep in a small sob, and hot tears oozed from beneath my eyelids until I was too tired to think anymore and was at last asleep.


	11. Not To Yield

Chapter 11: Not To Yield

" _To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."_

 _-Alfred Lord Tennyson_

* * *

The sun had barely started to rise when I was woken by a sharp, repetitive knocking on my bedroom door. I had evidently been crying in my sleep, and not too long ago, for my face was damp and sticky, as was the pillow beneath me. I wiped my eyes with a shaky finger as I groggily stood and shrugged on my dressing gown, tying it loosely around my waist and going to open the door. It must be Andrew or Nicole, I thought to myself. They were the only ones who would have anything to say to me at such an hour. But what could they need? It must be something urgent, for the tone in the knock betrayed that no time could be wasted.

When I opened the door, it was not Andrew or Nicole who stood there, but Holmes. I groaned. Normally I would have kept such a reaction locked inside my mind, but the hour was early, far too early for filters. And Holmes was already completely dressed and looking more alert than he had in days.

I blinked groggily, my vision blurred with sleep and tears, and looked him up and down. "I take it that drink John gave you worked wonders," I said at last, suppressing a yawn that threatened to escape as soon as I opened my mouth and hoping that my words weren't slurring too badly.

"Very much so," he replied, almost jovially.

"Why in heaven's name are you in such a good mood?" I confess that I may have been glaring at him a little bit.

"Because Edward Jamison is innocent!"

I groaned again and collapsed against the doorframe, too tired to support myself in my exasperation. " _Yes, I know."_

He froze, cocking his head slightly. "How do _you_ know?"

"Because we spoke to him last night after you left. Besides, I knew it from the moment he first appeared at the funeral. That grief was genuine. How do _you_ know?"

"I decided to test the blade of the late Simon Camberwell's knife to see if it had been rubbed with a leaf of _Atropa Belladonna._ "

"It wasn't," I said with a nod, turning my head briefly to yawn into my hand.

"So how much exactly did you discuss last night?" Holmes asked.

I held up a hand. "Let me get dressed and I'll tell you. Go ahead down to the drawing room; I'll meet you there as soon as I'm dressed and powdered."

Holmes nodded and left, and I swung the door closed behind him, dropping my dressing gown on the bed and turning to the mirror to dress.

* * *

A few minutes later, woken up considerably by the process of readying myself for appearance beyond my bedroom, I descended the stairs and found Holmes waiting in the drawing room. He was pacing in front of the hearth, a delighted spring in his step.

I sat down in the same place as I had the previous night, and told Holmes everything Edward had said to us, and everything we had theorised in turn.

When I was finished, he sat down with his fingers steepled for a moment before replying. "Why did this discussion take place during my absence in the first place?"

I sighed. "Out of everything I just said to you, that is most certainly not the only comment I expected you to have."

"It's not the only one," he replied. "But answer the question."

"Because you were being unreasonable, and we realized that while your sights were set so stubbornly on Edward and Simon Camberwell's other friends, progress on the investigation would not be stable, so we decided to pursue the matter further without you while it continued to be an issue."

"All right, I can concede that point. I was being foolish and unreasonable, and I believe I owe everyone in this house an apology. Next question. When can I speak to these other friends?"

I shook my head. "I'm sure they would need to be contacted first, or at the very least we would need to obtain their addresses." I paused after finishing my sentence, remembering the thought I'd had the night before. Should I tell Holmes, who had just recovered from an overly hard headed loyalty to such a notion himself? I needed to. Investigations were not about what was not being freshly considered for the first time. Investigations did not demand new information. Much the contrary, for the same theories often had to be considered over and over again from multiple angles until a solution was found. It did not matter that this take on the case was not completely new. It needed to be shared.

I picked at a loose thread on my left sleeve as I took a breath. "Holmes, about the other friends."

"Yes?" he looked up with raised eyebrows and an interested expression.

"I was considering last night after we had been discussing Mr. Johnson as a potential suspect, and I was wondering if Simon's other friends might still be on the list of possible suspects. We know that Edward is innocent, and Simon, of course, but what about the rest of them?"

"I have spent the past several days in a hazy pursuit of such a solution, Emily, and I believe I have exhausted all of the possible angles."

"That was then," I offered, "but what about now?"

Holmes looked off to the side for a moment, his foot tapping errantly – a sure sign that he was deep in thought. Finally, he turned back to me. "What is your reasoning behind such a proposition?" he asked.

"It was Edward saying he somehow came under the impression that Simon was stealing from his shares of the mine profits," I replied. "I thought that perhaps one of the others was doing such a thing, maybe that they wanted a larger share, and killing everyone else who would receive a share was the best way of doing so."

"But you said yourself that killing both the owner and heir to the mines means that they would close. What point is there if your share would be about to be cut short anyway?"

I stopped the nervous act of plucking loose threads from my clothing, my hands frozen in realization, unable to articulate their own movements. "That's very true," I admitted. "I also said that the motive for the murders must be wanting the mines closed."

Holmes nodded sagaciously. "And that is a very logical assertion. Very probable, in fact. And that does narrow down the list of suspects considerably to those with motive to want the mines closed. Given the cards which we currently possess, that list does not include our victim's friends from Eton. And that is precisely why I wish to speak with them, because until we hold enough of our own cards, we cannot effectively deduce what the other players hold in theirs."

I couldn't hold back a smile. That was certainly the Holmes I knew, the logical thinker who never made a move before every possibility was planned.

"You're smiling," said Holmes, as if he were observing my facial expressions for the first time as some sort of a novelty.

"…Yes, I am," I replied slowly after a moment of furrowing my brow in confusion. "Why do you act so surprised by it? I am a human, I do have facial expressions which directly correlate to my emotions, you know."

"It's simply that it's been quite some time since the last time I've seen you smile like that, is all," he said softly, once again trying to appear as if he were not watching me with great interest.

An uneasy feeling was starting to grow inside me, but I swallowed it and spoke. "It's been rather a mentally taxing time for me, what with being kidnapped and catching a glimpse of my sister in such a fashion. I'm sure you understand."

Holmes gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Indeed I do."

Curiosity and a bit of unbidden anger rose up inside of me. What did Holmes understand about the ordeal I'd been through? What did he know of the loss, the fear, the injustice that I felt? He was so logical, bordering on coldness at times. What could he presume to know about the enormous tangled mess that was emotion, and how much more tangled it became after a traumatic experience? I had to bite my tongue against letting out a sharp remark on the subject, even forcing the thoughts out of my mind as a twinge of guilt reminded me that Holmes' past was as much of an enigma to me as the location of my sister was. It wasn't that he didn't know what I had been through, but more that I didn't know what he had been through.

I became increasingly aware of the fact that my shoulders were tensed, a clear indicator of my discomfort with the potential directions of this conversation. In an obviously ineffective attempt to undo the damage that had been done by letting this show, I took a purposely deep breath and relaxed.

Holmes had noticed, of course. "Emily, I am aware that you have been struggling since your encounter with Moriarty under less than domestic circumstances. So is Watson."

It was coming. I knew it was coming. The knot in my stomach grew larger by tenfold, and I felt suddenly nauseous.

"However," Holmes continued, "Watson is not aware of certain things which I have gleaned."

Somehow, over all of my nausea and the loud throbbing within my head, I managed to offer a weak reply, however little of a reply it was. "What?"

"Not the least of which has been made clear to me this very morning." He nodded once again at me, his gaze pointing in the direction of my arms.

I looked down in dread to see that the sleeves of the dress I had chosen in groggy haste to wear were not long enough to cover the entirety of my arms, and several half-healed scratches, exactly perpendicular to one another, were plainly visible, a scabbed and slightly swollen red on my porcelain colored skin.

I gasped, trying to find some way to tuck them against my body and hide them away, but Holmes reached out, quick as lightning, and took a hold of one of my arms. "I confess that I am not skilled in the art of forming such words as these," said Holmes hurriedly, seeming if anything embarrassed, "but I feel that I must tell you that your suffering is not solitary. Your instinct to hide yourself away is not protective in the end, but harmful in many ways. It is often not seen until it is too late to turn back, so pray consider that." He eased himself back again, leaving me shaking and close to tears, my mouth slightly open in shock.

"John doesn't know you're saying this, does he?"

"As I only observed those marks this morning, no, he does not."

"Does he suspect?"

"I do not think so, no."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"I think it would be best for him to know. He is your half-brother, the closest thing you have to family at this time. It does not take someone with my powers of deduction to know that he cares deeply about you."

"Holmes?" I asked, after looking away for several minutes, calming myself down and thinking about the situation.

His gaze had never left me, and only the expression in his eyes changed, giving me the signal to go on.

"At least…at least let me be the one to tell him," I requested, pleading in my voice.

Holmes nodded. "I can grant you that right," he said. "Now I would suggest that we consider the time. Surely the others will be waking up by now, and we will be able to inquire with Miss Camberwell and Mr. Jamison as to the addresses of the late Simon Camberwell's friends."

We stood, and as we walked towards the staircase, we met Nicole on her way down.

"You two are certainly eager to start the day," she observed by way of greeting.

"Yes, I requested Emily's presence in the drawing room to fill me in on the events of last night's advancements in the investigation."

"There was actually something connected to that that Holmes was wanting to ask you," I said, giving Holmes a sideways glance.

"What is it, Mr. Holmes?" asked Nicole, adjusting her posture to be more comfortable for standing in one place long enough to hold a conversation.

"I was interested to know, Miss Camberwell, if you had records of the addresses of your brother's friends."

She shook her head in the negative. "No, I'm afraid I do not," she admitted grimly. "Edward was the only one of them that I ever corresponded with. The others I barely knew, and only saw a few times, visits at holidays and, of course, the visit of a few months ago. I assume that you still wish to speak with them for the investigation?"

"That is correct."

"Well, in that case, I'm sure that Edward will be able to help you. I am very sorry that I can't be of assistance in that area."

We were soon joined on the ground floor of the house by John, Andrew, and Lestrade. Holmes gave me a covert look, and I stared at the floor instead of returning it, as he was clearly taking the opportunity of John's presence to remind me of my promise to be the one to tell him. It wasn't at all that after what Holmes had said I was having any qualms about telling John, it was just that I wasn't ready. The entire possibility hadn't been sprung on me until today, and it certainly hadn't been expected. I needed at least a couple of days to consider how to approach the subject.

Nicole looked around at our small group, evidently noticing, as was plain, that Edward was not among us. "Well," she said at last, "if we would all adjourn to the dining room, I will ring for breakfast, and I am sure that Edward will join us shortly."

She was right. No doubt he had merely overslept, as I knew I would have done myself had Holmes not roused me so early.

Given this probability, there were no murmurs of disagreement as we all started in the direction of the dining room.

* * *

Breakfast was finished, and a slightly uneasy feeling was starting to spread throughout the room, for Edward had still not descended the stairs to join our diminished party.

"Does anyone object to my going to rouse him myself?" asked Andrew, preparing to stand.

No one spoke up, so Andrew pushed back his chair and left the room.

The silence was heavy during the time that he was gone, and so it seemed like much more of an eternity than it was. In reality, the clock only ticked out a minute and a half before Andrew's footsteps sounded heavy on the stairs. He was running, and had to take a second to catch his breath when he first came back into the room.

"Andrew?" My voice was apprehensive.

He finally managed to blurt out an explanation between gasps of air. "Edward Jamison is dead."


	12. Murder Most Foul

Chapter 12: Murder Most Foul

" _Murder most foul, as in the best it is,_

 _But this most foul, strange, and unnatural."_

 _-William Shakespeare_

* * *

Nicole's face went a sort of ashen grey, almost as if she herself were dead, and she dropped her fork onto the table with a clatter.

"How?" John inquired darkly.

"Don't be absurd, Watson, we know how he died," Holmes immediately admonished. "The question is how was the poison administered? Did he have a drink taken to him?"

"That's what I meant, Holmes…"

John's counter went mostly unnoticed.

"I didn't see anything like that," Andrew said. "I didn't look any closer either. I knew I should come get you."

Holmes, John, and Lestrade stood, and I started to as well, but John held up a hand. "Emily, stay here with Miss Camberwell."

Andrew moved to leave the room again, but quick as lightning, John stopped him as well. "No, Mr. Lynch, you stay here with Emily and Miss Camberwell."

Andrew opened his mouth to protest. "But I-"

"Unless you supervise them, Mr. Lynch, there is no telling where they'll run off to."

"Yes, Doctor."

John nodded briskly and followed Holmes and Lestrade out of the room. We sat in silence for several moments before I became aware that Nicole was hyperventilating, albeit softly.

I turned towards her and put a hand on her arm. At my motion, Andrew looked up sharply. He appeared to have been engaged in studying the fringe on the tablecloth.

"Are you all right, Nicole?" I asked gently.

Unable to say anything, she quickly shook her head.

"Do you need fresh air?"

She nodded.

"Absolutely not," Andrew cut in. "Doctor Watson will murder me if they come back and we're not here. Edward was just killed. His body was still warm when I checked for a pulse. The killer could still be close by."

"Andrew, please. Just to the front steps, and only for a few moments, until she can catch her breath."

He looked to the side for a moment, but shook his head again.

"Surely you are aware of what she has on underneath that dress!" I countered sharply. "Would you rather she faint?"

"Fine! But only for a moment. Here, help me support her." He relented and rose, and we helped her stand and supported her trembling figure until we were outside on the front steps of the house.

The cold morning breeze blew against my face, and I could see that Nicole was already visibly better. She was leaning against one of the tall pillars, eyes closed and letting the wind blow her loose strands of hair around her face. A moment later, she opened her eyes and looked at us. "I need to clear my head."

"You are clearing your head," replied Andrew tersely.

"Andrew, good Lord! You are taking this far too seriously!" I exclaimed. Indeed, he was acting far more serious than was his usual manner.

"Emily, there is a dead body upstairs! He was murdered not even half an hour ago and his is the third body to turn up in the vicinity of this house within the week!"

As if she hadn't heard any of this, Nicole said in the same soft voice, "I think I need to take a walk."

Andrew gave me an alarmed look, and I returned it. Nicole sounded as if she were in shock, and I wouldn't have doubted it for a moment.

"We should go back inside, Nicole," Andrew said warily, approaching her slowly in case she needed support.

She locked her gaze on him, and I confess that I was surprised, for they were sure, and did not have the vague, glazed look of a person in shock. "Please. I need to go for a walk. Just a short one. You can come with me."

Andrew gave a quick glance at the door. "It's all right," I said to him, "she seems to be in no danger at present."

"Can you walk on your own?" Andrew asked, studying Nicole closely.

She took a deep breath before standing straight up, but when she did, she seemed steady, like an old, weathered oak that is never blown down, although it may be slightly bent and rocked with each storm.

"I am fine." She began walking down the steps at a brisk pace, and we had no choice but to follow, Andrew's hand slipping into mine as we feverishly attempted to keep up.

Our gait bordered on sprinting as we struggled to keep Nicole within sight as she briskly made her way through the woods. She had the obvious advantage over us, as she knew every dip and rise in the landscape surrounding Rosedale Abbey, the location of every tree root and every stone that protruded the surface of the soil.

After a while, Nicole took a turn, curving through the trees in a direction that was unfamiliar to me. A musty, damp scent was wafting through the air, and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

"Nicole, where are we going?" I asked, as warily as I could as I struggled for a deep enough breath to get the words out.

She did not reply, nor did she need to, for it became painstakingly obvious within a few seconds. There was a large, gaping hole in the side of a hill, the border of it framed with wood so that it would not cave in. A stream of cold air flowed eerily out of it, like some kind of mouth engaged in an eternal act of gasping. Abandoned rocks and broken pieces of pickaxes were scattered around, and there was a sort of miniature train track that ran into the darkness inside the hillside, forming what looked like a tongue for the sinister mouth. There could be no doubt that this was the entrance to the mines.

Andrew stared in front of him in awe, and finally he grabbed Nicole's arm. "What are we doing here?" he demanded.

"It's all right," she said. "This is only one of the smaller entrances. It's an older one, as well. It isn't even used anymore."

"How far are we from the house?" I asked, now being able to draw enough of a breath to convey my wariness.

"Not too far," she said with a glance in the direction from which we'd come.

"You didn't answer me, Nicole," said Andrew, involuntarily shivering as a cold gust of wind blew. "What are we doing here?"

"The motive for these murders is someone wanting the mines closed," Nicole said, gesturing wildly to the entrance in front of us. "I had to come…come see."

"Come see what?" Andrew countered. "There's nothing here. It's an abandoned mine entrance, Nicole, that's it."

Although an instinctively bad feeling was brewing within me, I couldn't pass up the possibility of something, _anything,_ that might help us being here. "Andrew, she's right. It can't hurt to take a look around."

Our conversation was interrupted by a noise from within the mines. It was the sound of rocks scrabbling and wood creaking, as if someone, or something, were crawling around inside.

"Let's go," Andrew said, something fearful in his voice. "We shouldn't be here, especially not now."

But I was already moving closer to the entrance. Curiosity was pulling me forward, and no amount of reason could stop me. I turned to Nicole. "Have you been here before?" I asked.

She nodded, seeming frozen in place by the thought of whatever had made the sound we'd just heard. "Yes, a great number of times."

"Are there any lanterns lying about?"

"I can do you one better." She promptly strode to a large rock and reached behind it, pulling out an old oil lantern. She then reached for the bottom of that and pulled out a match. "The miners always kept an emergency matchbook adhered with wax to the bottom of the lantern," she explained, striking the match and lighting the lantern before Andrew could move to stop her.

"No," he said, pointing a finger in our direction, and I could only assume that it was intended for the both of us collectively. "Neither of you are going to enter that mine shaft. We are going to put that lantern out and go back the way we came. When we get back to the house, we will report to Holmes that we heard something at the mine entrance. And, I imagine, we will _all_ be chastised for leaving, especially me, having been assigned to make sure you two stayed put."

"Andrew, aren't you just a little curious to know what made that noise?" I asked.

He stiffened. "I'm sure it was some animal," he said firmly.

Nicole scoffed. "No, you're not. You're too scared."

"I am not scared! I am showing reason!"

"Good investigation calls for more risks than reason," I said, taking the lantern from Nicole and holding it out in front of Andrew. "You can either stay here, or take this lantern and lead the way."

Andrew tightened his lips and gave me a look, but after a moment of silent heated debate, he reached out and angrily snatched the lit lantern from me. "At the first sign of further trouble, we turn back," he said, stalking contemptuously into the mouth of the hollowed out hillside.

Nicole and I followed behind, and as the cold air hit us, Nicole grabbed my arm tightly. I winced, for her hand was clamped very tightly on top of one of my scratches, which was still in the process of healing, but I said nothing, and did not jerk away. I only bit my lip softly and reached for Andrew with my other hand for some reassurance. He put out his free hand behind him and I took it, all of us walking together carefully along the tracks in a closely knit clump.

The area that was illuminated by our meager light source was a long corridor of stone, with the track for what must have been mine carts running down the centre. The walkway was not closed by stone on both sides, only one. On the other side was a rather unsteady looking wooden railing, the supports of which were all but eaten away by some sort of mineral deposit that seemed to have spread like a fungus. I peered over the railing and saw a cavernous depression in the ground which had been dug out and descended down into darkness deeper than the night. The stone paved edge around the precipice went all the way around the cave-like space in which we had found ourselves, and several other corridors seemed to branch out from here on the other side. Moisture dripped from the ceiling above, pooling in a slight depression in the ground.

After we'd been walking for a few minutes, there came from somewhere behind us the sound of footsteps, the resounding echo making them out to be far louder than they actually were.

We all stopped short and whirled around. Andrew held the lantern aloft, hoping that it would illuminate some part of whomever was in here with us.

His light illuminated a shadow, but the personage itself could not be seen, and the shadow soon disappeared from view.

"Did they leave?" Nicole asked breathlessly.

"I think they – _run!_ " Andrew exclaimed.

"What?" I asked, looking around in confusion for the source of his urgency.

"Go!" he shouted again, pulling us further into the mine.

Nicole and I glanced at one another, for we had no idea what was happening, but we turned and ran anyway, Andrew two steps behind us as he ushered us on.

I was glad in a moment that he had, because there was a flash of light and smoke and a loud, thundering boom, the force of which sent us flying backwards into the stone wall.

We landed in a coughing heap, waving smoke and dust away from our eyes as the debris from the explosion cleared.

The lantern had gone out, leaving us in pitch dark. Andrew fumbled for a match to relight it. He held it up and cursed.

"What?" Nicole and I both coughed out in unison.

"There's no more light from outside." Andrew reported darkly.

We scrambled to our feet. Andrew began making his way through a sea of fallen rocks that now lay between us and the entrance. Nicole and I followed close behind him, slightly slower because of our long skirts and still coughing violently.

As we got closer to the place where we had come in, it became quite apparent. The explosion had triggered the fall of a large number of gigantic stones, and the entrance was now blocked. We were trapped.


	13. In Mazes Lost

Chapter 13: In Mazes Lost

" _Others apart sat on a hill retir'd,_

 _In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high_

 _Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,_

 _Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,_

 _And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."_

 _-John Milton_

* * *

For the next few hours, we navigated the labyrinthine corridors of stone, holding our breath as much as we could, for as we made our way deeper into the mine, the dank, metallic smell of rock turned acrid, a sign that we were growing nearer to the current site of excavation. More than a few times, having taken a side passage, we walked around in large circles for long amounts of time without realizing it. The general consensus was that if we followed our noses, going in the direction of the horrible scent, we would eventually reach another entrance.

I was walking shoulder to shoulder with Andrew, gripping him by the elbow and trying not to think about the puddle I'd just stepped in when I heard a tentative voice behind us. "I think you two should come look at this."

We both stopped in our tracks and turned to see Nicole, standing in front of the entrance to an offshoot of the passageway, wringing her hands in front of her.

Andrew and I warily exchanged a glance and walked carefully towards her. She lifted a finger and pointed into the dark, shadowy alley. I squinted, only being able to make out a dark mass until Andrew lifted the lantern.

A body lay crumpled in the passage. Not as if it had originally collapsed there, but as if someone had thoughtlessly dumped it there and left.

Andrew cursed and shoved the lantern into my hands, going to kneel by the corpse. I didn't have to watch him turn it over to be certain that it wasn't a mine worker. It wasn't dressed shabbily, and the only reason that it would appear to be at first glance was that it was covered head to toe in dirt and dust. The limp figure wore a black overcoat, and from what I could see in the dim light of our lantern, the nails were perfectly clean and manicured.

Andrew grunted, pushing at the shoulder of the deceased until it gave way, rolling flat onto its back, head lolling to the side like an abandoned ragdoll.

Nicole let out a small gasp and jumped back a few inches.

"You know him?" Andrew raised his eyebrows, looking up at her expectantly.

She nodded rapidly. "Yes. That's Leslie."

I looked from Andrew to the body to Nicole. "Leslie as in your brother's friend Leslie?"

"Yes. Is he –" I knew that she had about to say _dead,_ but had cut herself off before the end of the sentence.

Andrew nodded solemnly. "I'm afraid so. He's still slightly warm, but he's dead."

Nicole closed her eyes and tightened her lips, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering in the cold. "Was it poison?" she asked after a moment.

Andrew furrowed his brow and looked down at the body. I knelt down to look as well. The overcoat was buttoned, but there was something crusted on it.

"Andrew, look at that," I said softly, pointing to it.

He fixed his gaze on the spot and deftly began undoing the buttons of the coat. When it was done, he tried to pull the coat away from the body, but it stuck. He grunted and yanked harder, and a part of the shirt tore off with it, revealing a gaping hole in the chest cavity. It had stopped oozing blood, but it still seemed fresh.

"…No," Andrew said after a moment of looking at the wound in amazement, puzzled. "No, he wasn't. He was stabbed."

Nicole opened her eyes, startled. " _What?"_

I leaned back on my heels and considered for a moment how fortunate we were that the smell of the ores was so strong _,_ for it covered up the sickening odor of a corpse. Then again, if Nicole hadn't spotted it, we likely would never have found it at all. "Why was he stabbed and not poisoned?" I asked. "And why was he even here at all?"

"I don't think he was," Andrew said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have collapsed in that position. He was moved from somewhere else."

"No, it was here," Nicole said, the tone of her voice vague as she peered at something on the wall a few feet away. "Close to here, anyway. Bring the light over here."

Andrew scrambled to his feet, offering a hand to help me up.

We both took a few steps to see what Nicole had found.

It was blood. Smears of it along the stone wall. I remembered seeing it out of the corner of my eye a few minutes ago when we were passing by, but I had assumed it was only rust.

"That means he was stabbed back here somewhere," I murmured, walking back the way we had come slowly, a vision suddenly springing to my mind. _A man with a fatal wound in his chest, struggling, staggering, trying desperately to find his way out, to get help. He clutches at his injury, bleeding all over his own hands. His hands go to the rock wall for support as he inches along, every breath agonizing as he fights the urge to collapse. At the ingress of the offshoot, the wall ends for a space of about four feet, and he cannot stand for that distance on his own. He falls onto the ground just inside the smaller passageway with a cry, and his breathing becomes increasingly ragged and feeble until it stops altogether._ "Maybe he wasn't dragged or moved at all," I mused.

"What?" Andrew sprinted up behind me, Nicole close behind him. "What are you talking about?"

"The blood on the wall, Andrew. He was stabbed back here somewhere and dragged himself. He was trying to escape and couldn't make it."

"Emily, escape from whom?" Nicole's voice shook with fear.

I stopped in my tracks. _From whom? Escape from whom? Oh my God._

"Andrew, you said he was still slightly warm, right?"

"Yes," he replied slowly.

"So he's been dead for a few hours."

"Right…" Andrew drew out the last syllable.

"How long have we been in here?"

"At least… _oh my God._ " Andrew echoed my own thoughts.

"What am I missing?" Nicole asked in a small voice.

I turned to her. "We've been stuck in here for at least a few hours, Nicole. Someone was in here with us and they shut us in."

She inhaled sharply, her eyes wide with alarm. "And that person wasn't merely skulking in the shadows watching us," she said. "They killed Leslie."

I backed up a few steps and leaned against the wall on the other side of the passage from the blood, letting out a breath slowly. I winced as the putrid air filled my nose and lungs. "These connections are all very well and good, but that still doesn't explain what Leslie was doing here in the first place. And not just here in the mines, but _here._ Why was he in the area?" I glanced at Nicole, hoping that she would be able to offer some explanation. Perhaps she had sent telegrams to friends other than Edward.

She observed my glance and shook her head. "I didn't contact him, or any of the others. Only Edward. He was the closest to us, and I was afraid. The others never even crossed my mind."

"Is there any other way he could have heard about Simon's death?" Andrew asked.

"Well, perhaps Edward sent him a telegram after I contacted him," Nicole suggested.

I groaned softly. "We can infer about that all we want, but it's a little too late to ask either of them." I gestured with an arm at the body. "And besides, if he was here because of Simon's death, why would he not have come to the estate first?"

"Maybe he realized the mines were connected to the murders and came here looking for some clue?" Andrew mused, leaning against the opposite wall from me and less than ceremoniously removing himself when he realized he was leaning directly on top of a smear of blood.

"Perhaps we could start by finding out if that's why he was here," Nicole said. "If Edward wrote to him, maybe he has – had, I mean – some confirmation of that with him. We should return anyway, and alert them that there's another body."

Andrew cursed.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "What?"

"We've been gone hours," Andrew elaborated. "I'm sure they think we've been kidnapped – or worse. We should keep going, and quickly."

He took the lantern back from me and we started off down the main passage together again. The cold breeze was getting stronger, and so was the smell, and so I shivered and denied the innate urge to inhale as much as possible as we trudged on.

About ten minutes later, we all breathed a prayer of thanks, for we had reached another entrance. The afternoon light filtered in, and Andrew reached down and extinguished the lantern, setting it on a rock just inside the mine.

The daylight was welcome after hours in the dim, glowing light from a single flame, although it was more than a little uncomfortable and disconcertingly bright for the first few minutes.

"All right, Nicole, how far is it back to the house?" Andrew asked, turning his head this way and that to take stock of our surroundings.

We were close to the woods; there was only about fifty yards between the gaping hillside and the influx of trees. However, the trees extended as far as could be seen, and I had no idea how Nicole could be certain as she shielded her eyes with her hand, stood on her tiptoes, and peered around.

"The path is over there," she replied, pointing off a small distance to the left. "We can follow it straight back to the house."

Andrew nodded and grabbed me with one hand and Nicole with the other. Together, we walked briskly in the direction Nicole had pointed. Soon the path came into focus and we began half sprinting down it, slowing to a walk again as Rosedale Abbey came into view in the distance.

"You had better both be prepared for the reprimanding we are going to receive," Andrew muttered, a hint of contempt still in his voice now that the urgency of being trapped and finding a body had passed.

I gave him a look. "Andrew, we have an excuse!"

He sighed exasperatedly. "An excuse for being gone so long? Yes. An excuse for leaving in the first place? Not so much. I was supposed to keep you at the table. And not even for that long! As far as my responsibilities go I have been a complete failure."

We were finally drawing nearer to the house, and as we crossed the spacious lawn I squinted, looking for any sign of movement from anyone watching for us to come back. At first I saw nothing, and then a curtain being closed with a slight flourish as we drew close. A moment later, the door swung open and Lestrade came dashing down the front steps towards us.

"Where in the _hell_ have you been?" he asked angrily, looking us over, raising his eyebrows at our dust covered and disheveled state.

"We can explain, Inspector," Nicole jumped in hurriedly.

Andrew scoffed semi-hysterically. "Yes, _you'd_ better explain, Nicole. You're the one who wanted to leave in the first place!"

Nicole turned on Andrew angrily. "Yes, but _you're_ the one who let me!"

Lestrade held up a hand. "Save it, all of you. Holmes and the doctor are searching the woods on the other side of the house looking for you. I will fetch them, stay here."

He started to walk off but then evidently reconsidered his instructions and turned back to us, pointing. "Actually, no. Come with me."

His manner was harsh, and I thought about how I had not before seen him look so angry and disappointed as he led us behind the house and towards the other side of the woods. I tried not to look at the row of solemn gravestones out of the corner of my eye, the dirt under two of them still fresh. As we continued walking, Andrew shot Nicole and I an angry glare.

Before I could fully register what was happening, they had both stopped walking. "Stop looking at me as though this is entirely my fault!" Nicole spat. "You could have stopped me from leaving if you wanted to. But you didn't! This is more your fault than anything!"

"My fault?" Andrew let out a barking laugh. " _My_ fault? You were the one with not enough common sense to follow instructions in the first place!"

Fury in her eyes, Nicole reached out and gave Andrew a hard shove. He stumbled backward and then tried to lash back at her.

Alarmed, I stepped between them. "Both of you, stop," I said firmly, reaching out both of my arms to catch Andrew before he could make any attempt to hurt Nicole.

" _You're_ telling _me_ to stop?" Andrew goaded incredulously. "You, little miss 'it can't hurt to go in and take a look around, nothing will happen'?"

He tried to pull himself away from me, but I wouldn't let him. "Andrew, stop," I said in a low voice. "We all had a part in this, but what's done is done, and that is not what is important now. You are both being irrational and belligerent, no doubt because we just spent hours inhaling pure lead ore. I'll have John provide you with his antidote. Until then, think before you speak."

I waved on both of them, whose arms were crossed in front of them contemptuously, and we sprinted to catch up to Lestrade, who had stopped at the edge of the wood to watch the spat.

We went on into the trees until at last in the distance, we heard the sounds of leaves crackling and voices. One of them stopped speaking as we approached. "Lestrade, is that you?" Holmes called out.

"Yes, Holmes, it's me," Lestrade called back. "I have them. They came back to the house."

I heard a cry of triumph from Holmes and a loud sigh of relief from my brother, and the two of them lumbered towards us.

"Where in the devil have you been?" John asked, rushing over to us and inspecting us for injuries. "Your arms are scratched to bits and – Andrew, _why_ is there blood on your back?"

Andrew made a face of slight disgust and immediately shrugged off his vest.

"I will explain, John," I said, stepping in for Nicole and Andrew, for one was still filled with fury and the other was busy examining his vest with distaste.

"And it had better be a damn good explanation," Holmes said, looking us up and down with a critical eye. "Why were you in the mines?"

Lestrade looked sharply at Holmes. "What? How do you know that's where they were?"

Holmes gestured at us exasperatedly, giving Lestrade the same sort of look you give a small child who is asking trivial and needless questions. " _Look at them, Lestrade._ They're all dusty! Where else would they have gotten themselves so covered in dust?"

"You're right, Holmes," I said. "We were in the mines. Nicole wanted to go for a short walk to clear her head, so we followed. We ended up at one of the smaller, unused mine entrances. Nicole wanted to take a look around, and we decided it couldn't hurt."

" _We_ decided? _You_ decided that all on your own, Emily," Andrew cut in. "If it were up to me we would have come straight back."

" _Andrew!_ " I admonished, holding up a hand to silence him and then taking a breath to compose myself before continuing. "We heard a sound like someone was inside, so we lit a lantern and went in to see if anyone was there. Before we could see who it was, they had lit a stick of dynamite and run out. The explosion triggered a miniature avalanche, and blocked the entrance. So we had to explore the mines further to find a way out through another entrance. I admit that we got lost in the passages more than once. That's what took us so long."

Before I could explain about the body, John held up a hand, thinking I was finished. "First of all, Andrew, it was irresponsible of you to let Nicole and Emily leave the house in the first place. Secondly, Nicole, what exactly possessed you to think it was a good idea to go wandering about down there? And third, Emily, it was just as irresponsible to go along with any of it. You have been living with Holmes and I for a couple of months now, so surely you have learned some kind of common sense within that time."

I looked at the ground sheepishly for a moment before raising my head. "But there's something else. When we were in there, we found another body. It's Leslie, another one of Simon's friends."

All three drew back slightly at my words, Lestrade and John in shock, and Holmes more in surprise, less violently affected. Holmes, as a logical thinker, didn't allow himself to be "taken aback" by any course of events, having organized and theorised all possible progressions like the moves in a game of chess within his head. But despite all this, I could still tell that he had been caught off guard by my news.

"How fresh is the body?" Holmes asked, his eyes glinting metallically, the signal that somewhere behind them, gears were grinding fiercely inside the great mind.

"We found him only a little while ago," Andrew chimed in. "Thirty minutes ago at most. At that time I would say he had been dead about three or four hours."

Holmes raised his eyebrows. "And are you qualified to estimate that, Mr. Lynch?" Although he was still listening raptly to every detail we gave, he still beheld a note of the skepticism that I knew he held towards Andrew and his privileges in the position of the son of the Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police.

Andrew's lips tightened almost imperceptibly, and I almost told Holmes that this was not a good time to question Andrew's ability to be certain. Fortunately, however, he seemed to have regained the virtue of passivity for the present. "Not officially, no, but I have been around enough of those who are to pick up some quality indications. Based on the surrounding temperature in relation to the temperature of the body, it had stopped giving off heat between three and four hours ago."

"Poisoned?" John asked.

Andrew shook his head. "No. Stabbed. Emily thinks he tried to find his way out, and dragged himself along the wall a ways but he couldn't make it. We found him in the entrance to a smaller offshoot of the main tunnel. Prior to that offshoot, there were smears of blood along the wall from him trying to support himself. That's why there's blood on the back of my vest. I accidentally leaned against it."

Holmes was quiet, his brow furrowed, and I knew that the same thing that had crossed my mind was crossing his. Edward Jamison had been killed not half an hour before Andrew, Nicole and I had set off for the mines. This meant approximately twenty-five minutes between Edward's death and Leslie's death, not counting the time it would have taken to get back from the end of the mines where Leslie was killed to the end where we had encountered the mysterious dynamite-lighting figure, assuming that said figure was the killer. At first, it would appear that this all happened far too fast for it to be the same killer, but it also had to be taken into account that the poison that killed Edward would have taken hours to do so. Therefore, it would have had to have been administered at some time during the night.

As this thought passed through my head again, I shuddered, for the killer must have been in the house the previous night. Any of the rest of us could have just as easily been slipped poison and been dead by morning. The thought petrified me, although I knew it was by far not the first time the killer had been inside Rosedale Abbey. Nicole's father had been killed there as well, and he had been hiding in Nicole's closet the same night, perhaps because he had not yet had a clear path to sneak out after putting leaves from the deadly _Atropa Belladonna_ plant in with Mr. Camberwell's tea.

"But what was this Leslie doing in the mines in the first place?" Lestrade mused out loud.

"We're not sure," Nicole said, speaking at last, her sudden rage seeming to have melted away. "We thought perhaps Edward had contacted him after receiving my telegram about Simon being dead, and one thing we wanted to do after coming back here was look in his things and see if he had some confirmation of that, perhaps a draft of the document or a reply of some sort."

"We are fairly sure, though," I added, "that whatever he was doing there was the reason he was killed. Maybe he realized that the mines were the reason for the murders and went looking for answers. Maybe he found those answers. Either way, it warranted a quick death. There wasn't enough time to poison him."

Holmes nodded in agreement with my words. "Very true, Emily. Now let's say you three take us back there so we can have a look at the body."

"I'll lead the way." Nicole nodded tersely and led us back to the front of the house and down the path again.

As we were walking, I felt Holmes' eyes on me and slowed my pace to be even with him.

"Have you told John yet?" he asked quietly, and a pit dropped into my stomach as I realized what he had meant.

"Of course I haven't," I returned, carefully eyeing John, who was walking a few steps ahead of us, to ascertain whether or not he had heard. His gaze was locked straight ahead, one of his hands resting wearily on his shoulder, attempting to massage the pain away from his old wound. "I've been gone nearly the whole time since you and I discussed it this morning."

He gave a slight nod. "What about Andrew?"

I had been watching the ground in front of me carefully, taking caution not to stumble on any rocks or tree roots, but at this I sharply raised my head and looked at Holmes in surprise. "Andrew? Why?"

"Emily, despite any doubts I might have regarding the sincerity and depth of his knowledge in the field of criminal investigation, I know that he has grown to care about you just as much as Watson does. I would risk my reputation to say that he would be very upset if he found out later rather than sooner."

I bit my lip, realizing that he was entirely right. I had been too caught up in hiding my secret to consider that those I was hiding it from cared about me too much to accept my hiding it. And even if they didn't catch on very quickly, it was inevitable that they eventually would, just as Holmes had. I had to admit that it was by far preferable that they hear it from me than find out on their own, even if the latter was the easier road for me.

I considered in that moment asking Holmes if he had ever done the same thing that I had been doing. His words about understanding what I was feeling and about me believing that I was alone this morning had been very oddly placed had he not. But I was not bold enough to formulate a coherent sounding sentence on the subject at the moment, and the foul odor of the mines was creeping very close to us anyway, so I stayed silent.

Seeing that the main entrance to the mine was within sight, Holmes looked up and dashed ahead, stopping at the ingress. "Approximately how far in is the body?" he asked, looking between the three of us.

"About ten minutes of a walk," I replied.

Nicole walked over to the large rock and picked up the lantern we had left there before, striking a third match and lighting it.

Holmes nodded. "Nicole, I see you have a lantern, so why don't you lead the way?"

Nicole nodded and raised the lantern up to provide a sustainable light source and let out a steadying breath before walking into the mouth of the hillside, all of us following in her wake.

Andrew looked over at me and moved towards me, falling into step and slipping his hand into mine.

My breath caught in my throat as he did so and Holmes' words came floating back to me, my arm aching and burning in response. I knew that he had been right. I needed to tell Andrew. For heaven's sake, he was my beau, he was bound to notice at some point if I didn't tell him. In fact, I was quite surprised that he hadn't already, as he had spent the better part of the last month instructing me in various forms of defending myself. But now was most certainly not the correct time to say anything to either Andrew or John, and I needed time to properly think over what I needed to say.

I was broken out of my thoughts by the entire group coming to a sudden halt. Nicole had her free hand in front of her face. "I don't understand," she stammered out. "How –"

"Perhaps you were mistaken about there being a body," Lestrade said dryly.

"We were not mistaken, Lestrade," Andrew retorted. "I turned over the body myself."

I furrowed my brow. What were they talking about? I moved over a little bit in order to be able to see. I inhaled sharply and my hand flew to my mouth.

The body was gone.


	14. An Untimely Grave

Chapter 14: An Untimely Grave

" _Thou shalt confess the vain pursuit of human glory yields no fruit but an untimely grave."_

 _-Thomas Carew_

* * *

My eyes widened as I stared in shock at the empty passageway in front of my eyes. _Absolutely impossible._

John's arms were crossed and a disgruntled look was on his face. "I think maybe Lestrade is right," he said skeptically, his mustache bristling slightly with annoyance. "I do not see any body here, nor any evidence that there was one."

Andrew's hand had left mine and now was hanging slack at his side. Nicole numbly walked over and came to a halt at my other side. The three of us looked at one another, shaking our heads, completely speechless.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course there was a body here!" Holmes exclaimed after a moment, snatching the lantern and holding it up close to the wall. "Look here! Smears of blood, just as they said."

"Well, that looks like rust to me, Holmes!" Lestrade said, squinting slightly.

Andrew stiffened and pointed a finger at Lestrade. "I did not have _rust_ on the back of my vest!" he protested.

Holmes wiped a finger across the substance and sniffed it. "It's blood Lestrade. Something most certainly bled on this wall. And here!" He waved the lantern around the space a bit, and leap back in the passage a few feet, squatting close to the ground to illuminate a puddle.

We stepped closer to see. I gasped again, for the small pool of liquid on the ground was thick, opaque, and reddish brown in color. It was on the spot where I had tread in a puddle just before we found Leslie's body. And it was most certainly not a puddle of water. My left foot twitched involuntarily. No doubt my shoe and probably the hem of my skirt were now soaked with it.

"There most certainly was a body here," Holmes mused. "The only problem is that it isn't here now."

"Well where the deuce do you suppose it went?" asked Lestrade incredulously.

"I would imagine," replied Holmes, grunting softly as he stood up, "that the killer took it."

"Took it where?" I asked. "We saw him leave, and directly afterwards we became blocked in."

"There are other entrances," Nicole matter-of-factly pointed out.

Holmes nodded. "It is more than likely that after the killer made sure you three weren't able to follow him, he looped around the outside to the main entrance. There he waited until he knew you were out of his way and then came back in to dispose of the body when you came to fetch us."

"But where would he have taken it?" I repeated insistently. "We weren't gone from here very long at all, and it's no easy thing to carry a corpse away. It takes quite a lot of time and effort. And look here at the ground. I don't see any scuff or blood marks to show that the body was dragged anywhere. He would have had to physically lift the deceased off of the ground and carry him. That's slow progress, so it can't have been anywhere particularly far away."

"What about somewhere else in the mine?" John asked. "It's not a long distance, and I'm sure there's a lot of unused branches."

Holmes let out a laugh and clapped his hands together. "Watson, that's brilliant!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing throughout the space.

"So shall we split up?" Lestrade suggested. "We would cover a great deal more ground that way."

Holmes raised his eyebrows and I snorted. "I doubt splitting up would do us much good, Lestrade," I replied.

"And why not?" He appeared affronted.

"We only have one lantern," I said. Holmes lifted it and rattled it to illustrate.

Lestrade clapped his hands together, tightening his lips with the air of one who was about to claim that he had known that all along. "Together it is."

And we set off as a group, Holmes at the front of our party, holding the lantern high to illuminate our paths.

We turned down various offshoots, peering into an innumerable amount of nooks and crannies shrouded in gloomy darkness, searching for what seemed to be hours. Even with the time we had spent wandering the mines before, I had not imagined that they could be so vast.

A few yards ahead of us, beyond the reach of the lantern's flickering circle of light, there came the noises of scrabbling and scraping, and the unmistakable, eerily heavy sound of something being dragged across the ground. The cacophony echoed and reverberated off of every stone wall around us, and it was impossible to determine whether or not it was coming from the main passage or one of the smaller offshoots.

Holmes held up a hand, but none of us needed the warning. We all abruptly halted at the noise, causing Nicole to nearly trip over Andrew's left shoe. He immediately shot out an arm to steady her. I held my breath in dread and suspense.

"Who's there?" Holmes called out into the darkness, slowly and silently squatting to place the lantern gently on the ground.

"Holmes, what are you –" John began to ask under his breath. But he did not have time to finish, for the answer quickly became obvious.

A gunshot echoed with a sharp crack, and Andrew pulled me sideways into him as it whizzed past Holmes' collar and barely an inch from where my head had been a split second before. I let out my breath in a small gasp. Both hands now free to do so, Holmes pulled his own gun out of his coat the moment the shot sounded, signaling with a nod for John and Lestrade to follow suit and cover him.

Lestrade quickly turned to us and hissed, "You three, run. Andrew, get them back to the house immediately. Lock the doors and secure the building. Do not let anyone in until you see us come back."

Without even a nod in reply, Andrew turned tail and pushed us forward, and we set off at a sprint towards what might or not be the exit. We didn't have any time to stop and confer about which twists and turns would lead us back to the entrance, for we heard the cracks of returning gunshots from behind us, and the subsequent clinks as the bullets hit the walls, chipping off pieces of stone. Our breathing eventually became labored and my lungs seared with the effort of gasping for air, and we were forced to duck into an offshoot to stop for breath.

But after a moment, more shots sounded, closer to us, and a bullet struck a piece of stone directly above my head, which crumbled and fell in a powdery dust into my hair. _No, that's impossible,_ I thought, for this meant that there was more than one shooter. Even though I tried, I did not have a chance to look around for the source of these shots, for Andrew pulled us out from against the wall and pushed us forward again, urging us further and further ahead of him.

We all knew that there was no time to stay together. Although we were fleeing as a single group, we were each running separately, as fast as we could. And although Andrew was clearly faster than both of us, he lagged behind to act as a shield between us and the shooter and to continue pushing us further ahead of him. Soon enough, I had lost all inclination of where Andrew was, and even Nicole. I barely noticed when I passed the entrance of the mines and was surrounded by trees before I realized and slowed to a halt for breath, throwing myself behind a particularly large tree and doubling over, kneeling on the ground and gasping for breath. My vision was blurry and after so long blindly running through the dark, it took me a moment to adjust to the change in surroundings. It was growing dark outside, and I could not see where the sun was setting from within the dense prison of trees that completely encircled me. There was only a minute bit of light left, from which I peered around me as the world came back into focus. Something was familiar about this place, and as my eyes darted from a strange imprint in the blanket of wet leaves on the ground, as of something laying there for a prolonged amount of time, to the few brown leaves still adorning the branches of the trees around me, to the tangle of tree roots and the rotting log on the ground, I suddenly knew. This was the spot where we had found Simon Camberwell's body just days before.

But something was different, and not just the absence of the body. Something was…new. Wincing as my breath seared my throat and lungs once again, I inhaled deeply to clear the spots in front of my vision and stepped forward to peer around. Something was imbedded in the bark of one of the trees. I thought it was silver, but there was no moonlight yet, and so instead of a glimmer, there was only a dull, cloudy sheen. I reached forward to pull it out, and as it gave way I could see that it was a pocketknife, much like the one we had found with Simon Camberwell. In fact, as I squinted at it in the dim twilight, the style looked absolutely identical. I had no idea what it was, but I knew that something was peculiar about it, and I deftly snapped the knife closed and shoved it into my pocket.

A twig snapped somewhere not far from me. I started and turned around, but saw nothing. What should I do? Should I wait here and see if Andrew, Nicole, or any of the others turned up? Or should I head back to the house and wait there? Or should I go looking for them?

More than one shooter was out there, and wherever I went, I was alone, and I had no chance of securing either the house or the woods by myself. But we had been instructed to return to the house, so heading there was far better than the others reaching the destination before me and being forced to head out again in search for me or my body. So I shivered as a cold breeze rustled the scarce leaves on the trees like the decorations on a shaman's staff and headed briskly in the direction I thought to lead to the house. But from somewhere on my other side, I heard another twig snap, and as my head jerked to look, I could have sworn I saw a flurry of movement. The moment my head was turned, another shot rang out, and I dived forward, hoping to avoid its deadly trajectory. I stumbled and fell face first onto the ground, and my hands and feet slipped and slid on the wet leaves as I struggled to get up. Finally, I did so, doing my best to dodge the whistling paths of more bullets as I maneuvered through the trees. Bullets were coming at me from both sides, and although I did not slow to allow time for a deduction, something did not make sense. It almost seemed as if the two shooters were not aiming for me, but for each other.

Finally, the house came into sight, and I flew across the lawn, a second pair of footsteps behind me, slowing as a series of clicking noises began – a gun being reloaded. To a trained shooter, this only took a matter of seconds, so I didn't stop or slow and took the steps in twos, flinging open the doors and racing down the hallway, not stopping until I reached the kitchen and threw open the door.

The door to the kitchen slammed behind me, and any silence in the room was overcome by the deafening pounding of blood in my ears. My breath came hard and fast, my lungs searing painfully each time I inhaled. Strands of hair had fallen loose from their clips and were clinging to my forehead. My hands shook as I wiped them on my skirt and then gripped the edge of the table for support. My legs felt like jelly, and I knew I would collapse if I stood on my own. Still gripping the table, I shakily moved backwards to lean against the wall.

Everything in my mind was racing. God, what was going on? I didn't even know from whom I was running. All I'd heard in the chaos were the gunshots and the ensuing footsteps behind me when I ran. They had stopped to reload their weapon on the front lawn as I ran inside. Oh, God. That meant they couldn't be far behind me. What was I doing? I had no time to stop for breath. I pushed myself upright and looked frantically for something – anything – to use as a weapon. I have no idea why I didn't just pick up one of the many knives, or even the one I'd found in the forest – the thought only occurred to me _post hoc_ – but I must admit that I did no such thing. Instead my eyes fell on a large, bulbous pumpkin that was sitting ready to be carved up into some stew or pie. It was heavy, probably weighing about fifteen or twenty pounds. In my hurry I didn't question this as my choice of weapon, and hefted it above my head.

My arms were beginning to shake from the strain, and I was afraid that I would have to set the large vegetable back on the counter, but just then the door swung open and a figure appeared. I could only see the back of the head, for he immediately turned to wildly search the other side of the room with his eyes, a gun held loosely in his hands.

 _Protect yourself first, ask questions later,_ everything in my mind was telling me, so I mustered every ounce of survival instinct within me and brought the pumpkin down on the head as hard as I could. It must have been hard enough, for the unfortunate owner of the cranium immediately crashed to the ground, face down and limp. The force of the blow had done as much damage to the pumpkin as it had to the person. The outer shell had been crushed, leaving a huge mess of pumpkin seeds and the usual stringy, mucilaginous mass. I stood frozen in a shock for a moment, watching the substance drip out of the smashed shell I held in my arms with a sort of fascination. It was beginning to mix with and congeal in the individual's hair, giving off an effect as if they had applied far too much wax to it in the morning.

I was still stupefied a moment later when the doors opened again, with enough force that they smashed against the shelves and tables on either side of them and pots and canisters of spices were knocked to the floor with a loud series of clatters. My senses were both heightened and dulled at once from the adrenalin and shock, and while I was unusually aware of the noise, I merely stared rather stupidly at the gathering in the doorway for an embarrassingly long while before registering that the faces belonged to Holmes, John, and Lestrade, Nicole standing right behind them.

They appeared as stunned by the scene before them as I was. I could thoroughly understand why. I was standing over a face down, unconscious body, holding the shattered remains of a pumpkin while the innards of said pumpkin dripped down onto the body. It was then that it occurred to me that I must look like a total moron to have used the large squash as a weapon in a room full of knives of every description.

All four of them looked as if they might like to make some mention of said moronic decision, but they did not.

"What in the blue blazes happened?" Lestrade asked, looking from the body to me to the pumpkin.

"Who is that?" Holmes asked, holding one arm to his chest at a strange angle and not giving time enough for me to answer Lestrade's inquiry.

"I-I don't know," I stammered.

John knelt to examine the body, checking for a pulse and then carefully turning it over. I had turned to set the pumpkin down on the counter behind me and so froze when I turned back to see all three men plus Nicole staring at me expectantly. My gaze dropped to the limp figure on the floor, and my hand flew to cover my mouth in horror. It was Andrew. I'd knocked Andrew unconscious with a pumpkin. "Oh my God," I breathed.

"It doesn't seem particularly dangerous," John said. "He won't be unconscious for long, and it's only a minor concussion."

His reassurances didn't assuage my guilt. I hadn't just hit Andrew on the head with a pumpkin, I'd _concussed_ him with it.


	15. These Things Hid

Chapter 15: These Things Hid

" _Wherefore are these things hid?"_

 _-William Shakespeare_

* * *

"Where in the hell is Nicole?" Asked Andrew a few moments later, his words slightly slurred as he struggled back to consciousness on the sofa in the drawing room.

"Well, isn't it nice to know who you hold the most concern for?" I asked wryly, standing behind him and plucking strings of pumpkin innards out of his hair.

He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes, trying to lean away. "And _what_ are you doing?"

I opened my mouth, attempting to form a reply, but only a small sigh came out, and I closed my mouth again in exasperation and sank down onto the arm of the sofa.

"Andrew, how's your head?" John asked, walking back into the room with a glass of water.

"It hurts like hell," he replied. "Why does it hurt like hell? And where is Nicole?"

John handed Andrew the water and gave me a pointed look. "Emily?"

I plucked another pumpkin seed out of Andrew's hair as he flinched away from me, sloshing his water considerably, and sighed. "Andrew, I ran inside and I thought you had a gun and were trying to kill me so when you came in I hit you over the head with a pumpkin."

"But…the last thing I remember doing is coming into the kitchen. I was trying to find you."

" _Yes, and when you got there I mistakenly hit you over the head with a pumpkin,"_ I said slowly and exasperatedly.

"Emily, the kitchen is full of knives!"

"I realize that now, but aren't you glad I didn't stab you instead?"

John stepped in between our heated debate, forcing me to step back a few paces as he tilted Andrew's head forward to inspect the large bruise that was no doubt quickly sprouting. "Nicole is with Holmes and Lestrade upstairs. They went to search and secure the rest of the house. Now you have sustained a slight concussion, but it doesn't appear to be very serious. There will, however, be quite a bit of bruising."

Andrew winced as John's fingers found the spot of the impact, but he turned his head to look at me and pulled himself upright all the same. "So first you get me shot and now you concuss me?"

"Andrew, I did not get you shot!" I exclaimed.

"Then what was it that happened?"

"You got yourself shot!"

"I was rescuing you! You'd gotten kidnapped, remember?"

"You weren't supposed to be rescuing me! You were supposed to stay behind!"

Stop it, both of you," said John in a monotone. "This was an accident."

"I'm sorry," I said, dropping my gaze to the floor. I wasn't sure if I was speaking more to John, Andrew, or myself.

"Emily, why don't you go see if you can find the others upstairs," John suggested softly. "See if they require any assistance."

I nodded in response, although John's back was turned to me, and I gave a last apologetic look at Andrew before turning and leaving.

My adrenalin from the run back from the mines had not yet worn off, and as I briskly climbed the stairs up to the first floor, I struggled to remember exactly what had happened. Everything was a blur. We had lost each other while running from the gunshots in the mines, and then I was in the woods and the shooter started shooting at himself…no, that wasn't right…there was more than one shooter, and they were shooting at each other…or was it at me? Then one of them had chased me through the front lawn of the house and I escaped inside the house while they were reloading their gun. And then Andrew reappeared, apparently looking for me, only I didn't realize it was him and knocked him unconscious with a large squash. Then, that must mean he passed the shooter on the lawn. Unless he was that shooter? But then why would he have been shooting at me? Was he shooting at the second shooter, who was shooting at me? But where did he get the gun?

My head was hurting, probably from all these questions and a continued effort to steady my breathing, as I reached the top of the first staircase, looking to my left and right for any sign of the others. A little further down the corridor, a door was ajar, and cautiously I proceeded towards it. I pushed it open slowly with my foot, tensing my upper body to fight if someone was hiding in the room. But nothing jumped out at me, or stirred at all, as the door swung open. A small suitcase lay at the foot of the bed, the handles worn and corners scuffed from a great deal of travel. This must be Edward's room, for the coach he had ridden into town had deposited his single bag of hurriedly packed luggage later on the day he arrived. My suspicions were confirmed when my gaze traveled up and I saw the body of the young, redheaded man sprawled on the bed, one arm drooping off the edge of the mattress and obviously having not been moved from the position in which he was found.

I set my jaw against the slight odor that was starting to spread and stepped closer. I doubted that much investigating had been done in the room, for we had left the house this morning not long after Andrew had proclaimed that Edward was dead, and it must not have been long after that that they discovered us missing and headed into the woods to search.

Edward's other arm was thrown across his chest, his hand clutching at his neck and head tilted to one side. I glanced towards the door – Holmes would be less than pleased if he discovered me moving any part of the body – and pried the hand gently away from the throat, peering closer. There was a small hole the size of a pinprick below the base of the jawline – the site of an injection, perhaps? I narrowed my eyes for a moment, trying to recall what I had read in one of John's books from medical school about the veins and arteries in the neck. The injection must have been administered straight into the external jugular vein, which would carry the poison much more rapidly and effectively through the blood stream than the previous methods of administration – through a cup of tea and a mug of ale. The killer had wanted him dead in a hurry then – just like Leslie. Why was that? Had they both known something? But if Edward had known something, wouldn't he have told us?

With another careful glance at the doorway, I knelt down by the foot of the bed and examined the suitcase. I peered closely at the clasps, worn smooth and shiny as a brass doorknob from as much use as the rest of the case. The state of the luggage seemed strange to me. Edward's voice was educated, he had obviously been raised well and had attended schools of prestigious learning. I knew he had attended Eton with Simon and their other friends, but he had clearly attended a university of high repute as well, and his clothes were perfectly tailored and crisp. He had surely come from money, so why was his suitcase not as polished as the rest of him seemed to be?

I let out a soft curse as I realized that the suitcase required a key to open, which I did not have. With luck, what I was looking for wouldn't be in there at all. We needed something that confirmed that he had written to Leslie and possibly any of the others when he found out about Simon's death. Something that would have made them drop everything to arrive at the estate as soon as possible. He couldn't have written to them after he arrived, that was only last night, but if he wrote to them immediately after receiving Nicole's telegram, then maybe he had brought their replies with him. My gaze swept over the room again and alighted on the desk. It was bare on top, but there were four drawers underneath, and I stood and went over to them, trying each one in turn. All of them were empty. No, no, it couldn't be. There had to be something here. I took another steadying breath and concentrated my gaze once again. It wouldn't do to look about frantically, I was liable to miss things. I needed to take it slowly.

Just then I noticed a little corner of something sticking out from under the desk blotter. My breath catching in my throat, I pulled it out, running my eyes over it. _Yes! Yes, this was it._

The recipient was listed as Edward Jamison, and the sender was Leslie Godwin. _Coming at once. I trust everything is ready,_ read the message.

 _I trust everything is ready?_ Now what on earth could that mean? And for that matter, why had Edward sent out the telegram first thing? For his correspondence to arrive and in order for him to receive a reply before he left, he would have had to send it out directly after receiving Nicole's message. He'd just received word that his best friend had been murdered. Why was his first response to send out additional messages instead of to leave at once and worry about correspondence later? What could have been more important to him than to be there for Nicole and to say his farewells to Simon? And what could have been in the original message to prompt such a reply?

"Looking for something?" Came a voice from the doorway.

I gasped and turned to see Holmes standing on the threshold. I quickly slipped the telegram back onto the desk. "Holmes, I can explain."

"John requested that you come assist Lestrade, Miss Camberwell, and myself, and you found yourself sidetracked on your way to find us."

I raised my eyebrows, pursed my lips, and nodded. "Did John tell you I was coming up?"

"No. But I do know you a bit better than you may think."

"I know I shouldn't have done it, especially as I imagine you haven't had time to examine the scene yourself. My curiosity got the better of me."

Holmes' jaw tensed, as though he would like to say something, but he thought better of it. Instead, hands clasped behind his back, he strode further into the room, one eye on the corpse and the other looking at me inquisitively. "What did you find?" he asked.

I took a breath before speaking. "There's a needle mark on his neck, at the site of the jugular vein. I'm guessing that's where the poison entered his body in this case."

Holmes nodded, showing no reaction to my news, clearly waiting for more. "And what does this tell us about his death?"

"That the poison spread more rapidly through his system, taking on more concentrated effects and killing him a great deal faster. Someone wanted him dead quickly, just like Leslie. Which would lead us to believe that they knew something."

A ghost of a smile flickered across Holmes' face, and his eyes twinkled. "Excellent. What else is there?"

"Well, the suitcase at the end of the bed is worn. It's been used a lot for traveling over the course of many years, without being replaced. I found that curious given that it's obvious he comes from a great deal of money. His clothes are tailored and he's well groomed, not a single patch from what I could see. So if he does such a great amount of traveling, we must ask why his suitcase has more scuffs than his shoes. I was looking for proof that he'd written Leslie to inform him of Simon's death, but the suitcase is locked and I don't know where the key could be. So I went to look in the desk. The drawers were empty, but I found this tucked underneath the desk blotter." I reached back to pick up the telegram again and handed it to Holmes.

He looked it over with a critical eye, nodding slowly and mulling it over. He pulled out the desk chair and sat down on it, crossing his legs and steepling his fingers.

"I was wondering," I continued, taking the chance that he might still be listening, "why when he heard the news of his closest friend's death, his first reaction was to send word to one or more of his other friends instead of coming to support Nicole first and making that a concern later. What could have been more important to him? And what on earth could have warranted that reply from Leslie?"

Although Holmes did not form a response, I knew he was still taking in what I said.

"What made you look for that needle mark?" he asked after a moment of silence. "That isn't something one generally notices at first glance, and it looks as if his arm is covering that area."

"I saw that his hand was sort of clutching at that area, so I thought I'd…move the body a smidgen and take a look."

"Emily, under no circumstance from now on do I offer any support of you moving dead bodies when supervision is not present."

I nodded sheepishly.

"However, I would like to say that if you look closer, you will see that the hand is not in fact grasping at the throat, but at something behind it."

"But there's nothing behind it," I replied, my brow furrowing in confusion. "Just the pillow."

"Ah, but you must certainly be aware that pillows can hide fascinating things," he said mysteriously, pointing a finger at me and rising from his chair.

I drew back slightly in confusion. Holmes' eyes had been sharp in that moment. He had meant something else by that, I knew it. My mind flashed to my bedroom in Baker Street, and the small blade from John's razor carefully hidden underneath the pillow. But…he couldn't know about that, could he? He had only found out this morning.

Pulling myself back to the here and now, I followed Holmes to where he was now bent over the head of the bed, reaching underneath the pillow and the lifeless head that lay on top of it. "Halloa!" he exclaimed after a moment, his eyes glinting as he extracted something round and gold.

"A pocket watch?" I asked, peering closer.

"Indeed it is," Holmes replied, the corners of his mouth twitching in a slight smirk. "I expect Lestrade and Miss Camberwell will be back downstairs by now, would you kindly ask everyone to come up here? The end of this little game is at hand."


	16. Time Is A Very Shadow

Chapter 16: Time Is A Very Shadow

" _Our time is a very shadow that passeth away."_

 _-The Wisdom of Solomon 2:5_

* * *

A few moments later, our entire company stood gathered around the bed in the late Edward Jamison's room. Nicole was apprehensively sneaking glances at the ashen and lifeless body still on the bed. Andrew was grimacing, his hair still matted with bits of squash, and supporting himself against the wall, although he was attempting to feign steadiness as best he could.

"Mr. Holmes, what are we all doing here?" Lestrade asked, arms crossed and looking around warily. "There's still a shooter out there somewhere, we should be looking for him! Especially considering that one of our bullets struck him in the mines."

"Lestrade, there was more than one shooter," I informed him, shaking my head. "When we were running back for the house, someone else began shooting at us. In the chaos, we separated, and I was running through the woods when more shots sounded. Only they were coming at me from both sides, so there were at least two more shooters. The thing was, it didn't seem like they were aiming for me. Otherwise with two of them there, it's more than likely I would have been hit at least once. It seemed more like they were shooting at each other, and I was only caught in the crossfire."

Nicole's brow furrowed. "Well, that's peculiar. Why would two shooters after us be shooting at each other?"

At this moment I happened to look over at Andrew, who was shifting rather uncomfortably and clearing his throat, avoiding my gaze. Finally, he looked up and his eyes connected with mine, and he broke down and spoke. "You…you were caught in the middle of that?"

I sighed. "Andrew, what did you do?"

"Outside the mines I found a gun and some clips of ammunition. Someone else must have dropped them in their haste. So I picked them up and loaded the gun. I started into the woods and caught a glimpse of someone else with a gun. I figured they definitely couldn't be on our side, so I started shooting at them, and they returned fire. Emily, I had no idea you were out there too, until I saw you run into the house. I greatly apologize."

"Wait." I held up my hand. "Was that you reloading your gun on the lawn? I heard someone behind me, so I kept running inside, and that's when I found my way into the kitchen."

Andrew nodded. "I saw you running for the house, and I knew the other shooter was still behind me. So I covered you in hopes that you could get away. The shooter ran off towards the town after that, and I never saw his face."

I felt an odd sort of burning sensation in my gut, and suddenly I felt rather bashful looking in Andrew's direction at the thought of what lengths he had gone to in order to protect me.

"So there were at least _two_ shooters total, possibly more," Lestrade concluded. "That still does nothing to tell us why we are here, in front of this dead man who can no longer tell us anything of importance, instead of hunting down these perpetrators."

Holmes groaned audibly and turned away. "Lestrade, you cannot possibly have just insinuated that Mr. Jamison here can tell us nothing of importance. Whyever do you think you call _me_ to the scenes of your murders? Why did Gregson call _me_ to Lauriston Gardens to view Enoch Drebber's body? Was it not because you had great reverence for my ability to interpret what the dead have to tell us?"

"All right, Mr. Holmes, you've got my attention. Pray tell us what Mr. Jamison has to say."

A small smirk flitted across Holmes' face, and I could tell that he was greatly enjoying the thrill that was found in this dramatic spotlight. "Edward Jamison did not consume any beverage containing our _dose mortelle,_ so to speak. As Emily informed me that she herself observed, there is an injection below his jawline. Watson, that is the sight of the external jugular, is it not?"

John nodded tersely in response to the question, his gaze fixed and limbs rigid as his military training dictated.

"What, then, does this tell us about his death?"

"The poison was injected directly into his bloodstream," John replied evenly, stepping to the bedside and bending over the corpse to see for himself. "As the heart pumped the directly contaminated blood through his body, the onset of symptoms and subsequent death was far more quick and efficient than the others."

"He was wanted dead quickly, just like Leslie," said Andrew softly, looking slightly ashen in the face. I furrowed my brow in concern. He did not look particularly all right. In fact, he seemed to have only worsened in terms of steadiness since coming up here.

John nodded in Andrew's direction. "That's exactly right. But Holmes, if that is the case, then why – good heavens, Andrew, are you quite all right?"

Andrew nodded and waved his hand dismissively, but even as he attempted to reassure us, his legs buckled and he slid down the wall partway. I rushed to his side and allowed him to grip my arm for support as Lestrade pulled out the chair from the desk for him to sit in.

Once seated, Andrew seemed to regain a bit of color in his face, but I stood behind him with my hand firmly on his shoulder to keep him from standing up.

With intermittent glances at Andrew's pallor, John continued. "If that is the case, Holmes, then why was he not simply stabbed, as Leslie was?"

"Perhaps they were killed by two different people, with two different ideas," offered Nicole. "We do know that at least two people are involved in this."

"Miss Camberwell does have a valid point," said Holmes, nodding. "That has yet to be seen. But we do know that someone wanted this man dead urgently, and we may well have in this room the very reason why."

I sucked in a breath. _The pocket watch Holmes found._ Something, some sense of urgency, inside of Edward had used his last moments to fight the involuntary convulsions in his muscles and clutch for the spot under the pillow where it was hidden. He knew that he would not live to tell whatever it was he knew, so he used the final vestiges of strength within him to point us towards the secrets he had learned.

Holmes pulled out the object itself, displaying it on his palm. It glinted gold in the light of the room, and was engraved with the cursive letters _E.J._ It seemed far too small to make such a magnitude of difference upon this case.

"Edward's pocket watch?" asked Nicole.

"Indeed it is, Miss Camberwell. Let us wind it up and see what it has to tell us." Holmes deftly opened the cover with a single snap of his wrist, revealing the hour and minute hands, which stood still at ten minutes past two, their stately forms still shrouded in the mystery of whether it had been two o'clock in the morning or afternoon at which it stopped. He took hold of the knob at the side and began to turn it, but stopped almost immediately and looked at the watch face, clearly taken aback. He quickly turned and set it on the desk, digging into his pockets.

"Holmes?" John asked, cocking his head in confusion. Andrew turned his head to watch Holmes, and with my hand still upon his shoulder I could feel his bated breath.

"This is most unexpected," muttered Holmes, pulling a miniature pocket knife from his jacket and turning the watch over to pry up the casing. But he faltered as he poised his knife, and I could see why. There were already scratch marks along the edge, sharp and deliberate. Someone had already done this same thing, and then replaced the casement. After a moment of hesitation, Holmes proceeded. For if someone had already taken these same actions, then there truly must lie something of importance beyond the shiny barrier.

"Holmes, what is it?" asked Lestrade, watching the detective's movements with great interest.

"Nothing happened," Andrew replied, as Holmes was too absorbed in the work to answer. "When he wound up the watch, the hands did not move."

These words alone seemed to tax him greatly, for after speaking he took several deep gulps of air in immediate succession. My hand tightened on his shoulder as I was filled once again with guilt for what I had inadvertently done to him.

"Halloa!" Came the soft exclamation of triumph as Holmes succeeded in opening the casement, and he held up his findings. "The mainspring, the gears, the escapement, _none of it is there!_ This is what was hidden inside the compartment where they should be." The thing he was holding up for all of us to see was a small key.

"For the suitcase," I murmured, and at my words Holmes' eyes flickered to meet mine.

"Precisely my thoughts," he said. "Watson, hand me the suitcase at the foot of the bed, would you?"

My brother nodded and bent down to lift the scuffed bag. His eyes narrowed as he exerted more strength. "Holmes, what would you suppose is in here? It's far heavier than clothes and a few books should be."

"How the blazes would you know that he had packed clothes and a few books, Doctor Watson?" asked Lestrade incredulously.

"Inspector, do tell me," replied John wearily as he handed off the suitcase to Holmes, "did Edward Jamison look to you like the sort of man who would travel without some reading material?"

Lestrade lowered his gaze as Holmes hefted the suitcase onto the desk and raised the key, fitting it neatly into the left hand hole and turning. The clasp made a satisfying _click_ as the tumblers neatly lined up, and Holmes let out a pleased breath and did the same on the right side.

John made his way to the other side of the bed in order to gain a better view as Holmes lifted the lid.

Inside the suitcase, neatly stacked, were several paintings with gilded frames. The top one was of a young girl with a curly-haired spaniel by her side. Judging from the cut of the dress she was wearing, the painting was no less than one hundred years old. As Holmes lifted the first one and set it carefully to the side, he revealed another painting from the same time period. A landscape view of a bridge over a pond adorned with lily pads. Holmes repeated this action until five paintings were lined up side by side. He turned to Nicole, who had her hand clamped over her mouth. "Nicole, do you recognize these?"

She nodded. "Yes, these paintings used to hang on the walls upstairs."

"They were just recently removed, weren't they?" I asked softly. Holmes looked at me strangely, and I shrugged. "I noticed the bare patches on the walls when we first arrived. The colouring of the wall was very different, so it was obvious that it had only been recently done."

Nicole once again gave an affirmative sign. "Yes, when my mother died, my father had some portraits commissioned based off of several photographs we'd had taken during her lifetime. They were supposed to go where these ones had hung previously. My father received a letter last week that the finished portraits would be sent within a fortnight, so he had these taken down in preparation. I overheard him telling Simon that he would most likely be selling these to an art dealer from London on his next trip, and he'd been storing them in his closet until he got the chance to go down there again. They were part of the inheritance when my grandfather died, and he never even knew the subjects of the paintings. But…why did Edward have these in his suitcase?"

"He was protecting the watch in his dying moments," I mused. "The watch contained the key, and the key opened the suitcase, which contained the paintings. Clearly there's something within these paintings that he wanted us to find."

Andrew, looking substantially less ashen by this time, reached over and took one of the paintings, turning it over. I inhaled sharply at what I saw. The backing of the painting had been torn apart, and roughly sewn back together, by someone either extremely rushed, someone who had no experience whatsoever with a needle and thread, or possibly both.

"Holmes, may I borrow your knife?" asked Andrew.

Holmes glanced at the back of the painting and made a small noise of discovery before handing over his pocket knife.

Andrew expertly flicked it open and began cutting through the rude stitches. Once he was close enough, he ripped the last couple open to reveal neat stacks of banknotes, of the fifty and one hundred pound denominations.

"Oh my God," I breathed. Andrew ripped out the stitches on the back of the other four paintings as well, removing enough banknotes to easily equal half a million pounds.

"No, no it's impossible." Nicole's voice was squeaky as she shook her head vigorously from side to side. "Why on earth would Edward have that much money?"

"I don't think he did," I said without taking more than a second to think. I wasn't confident that I could do anything to help, however. The situation looked very bad. "Holmes and I were discussing the apparent disrepair of his suitcase. It seemed strange to me that his suitcase, so worn and frayed at the handles, clasps, and corners from much travel and repeatedly being loaded onto carriages and trains, is so much more scuffed than the rest of his clothes. His suit was well tailored, his shoes were shined to perfection, everything about him spoke of his wealthy background, except his suitcase. From that we can infer that he had enough money to keep himself looking neat for business, as is most important, but not enough to afford any other small luxuries. This money was not his."

"No, but a great deal of it should have been," came a voice from just outside the door.


	17. Wherever Truth May Lead

Chapter 17: Wherever Truth May Lead

" _We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."_

 _-Thomas Jefferson_

* * *

Holmes and Lestrade pulled their guns quickly from their pockets, and Andrew fingered his, the one he'd stolen from outside the mines. John reached outside the door and roughly pulled in a dirty-faced young man whose sleeves were ripped and torn in several spots.

"Easy, now! It isn't as if I wasn't about to come quietly."

Andrew reached back and pulled me behind him, and made a move to do the same to Nicole, but she wrenched free and took a step towards the man. "Victor?"

His gaze snapped to her, and sorrow entered his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Andrew, kindly relinquish your seat to this man. I daresay he has a lot to tell us," Holmes said evenly, keeping his gun pointed straight at Victor.

Andrew nodded and stood up, wobbling slightly. My hand went to his arm again to hold him steady.

"You need not point that weapon at me, Mr. Holmes," Victor said calmly, taking the seat with steady movements. "I am entirely out of bullets."

Holmes did not look as if he believed a word of Victor's reassurances, and he nodded to John. "Watson, take his weapon."

Victor visibly bit his tongue against saying or doing something to antagonize Holmes, and raised his hands slightly in the air as my brother reached into the man's jacket to pull out his gun.

"He's right, Holmes, the cylinder is empty. The weapon is much too light," John said, popping the cylinder open to illustrate, exposing the empty chambers.

"You were the other shooter in the forest, weren't you?" Andrew asked, looking down at Victor with a grimace. I wasn't sure if it was more disgust or nausea from standing upright.

"Well, I must congratulate you on your aim. You managed to keep me dancing on my toes," Victor replied, looking Andrew up and down appraisingly. "Although I daresay you don't look very well."

"That's…not really connected," I interjected, giving Andrew enough time to breathe deeply for a few seconds.

"Not _really?_ " Victor raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

"All right, enough with the small talk." Lestrade looked vaguely impatient. "What in God's good name is going on here?"

"Yes, I would quite like an explanation myself," Holmes said, arms crossed and weapon lowered. "You are Victor Hughes, are you not?"

Nicole's head shot up. "How do you know his surname?"

"Miss Camberwell, I found his name and address in your brother's chambers. It was not overly difficult," Holmes replied, tartness palpable in his speech.

"You had their addresses all this time?" I asked incredulously.

Holmes glared at me without giving an answer.

"I am, Mr. Holmes," replied Victor with a solemn nod.

"What were you doing in the woods, Mr. Hughes?"

"I was making certain that she did not double back to the mines." He nodded his head in my direction, and I inhaled sharply.

"And why could you not risk that?"

"So that Leslie's body could be safely dragged away. God rest his soul." Victor bowed his head and crossed himself.

"Did you not kill Leslie Godwin?"

"I did not kill him, Mr. Holmes, but I know that it had to be done, and I despise that very much."

"Why did it have to be done?"

"He backed away from our deal. He said the risks were too high."

"The risks of being caught?"

"Yes, sir."

"Holmes, why do I feel as if you know a good deal more than we?" John asked, his eyes darting back and forth between him and Victor.

"Come now, Watson, the answer is quite obvious."

Had my eyes not been largely fixed on Holmes and Victor, I could have sworn that I saw John raise his eyes to the ceiling in a longsuffering prayer.

"You believed that you were being cheated out of the money, didn't you?" I asked. The gears in my mind had been working towards the answer for the past several moments.

"The money from the deal with my father?" Nicole asked softly.

"Yes, and we were," Victor replied, bitterness in his voice. "The sums seemed all right at first, but as the amount of lead being mined grew, our share of the profits shrank. I daresay greed got the best of the old man."

"So why did you not just confront him, or report the scandal to the police?" Andrew asked from beside me, his voice growing slightly steadier.

"We should have done such a thing. My God, we should have. But when we met to discuss our best course of action, we foolishly decided that Mr. Camberwell would likely refuse, and that if we went to the police, they would rather side with the party with the greater wealth to his name. That night, when we met at the _Black Kettle,_ we had intended to confront Simon about the issue, in hopes that he might be able to give us some justice and peace of mind."

"But instead you killed him," Nicole spat out bitterly.

"Nicole, I swear to you, we did not kill your brother. We finished our drinks and left the pub. It was our plan to ask him about the money after we left. However, none of us expected to drink as much as we did. Instead of confronting Simon about his father cheating us, Edward directly accused him of being behind the whole thing. He threatened him, told him he'd make him pay if he didn't hand over the money that very night. He included some other things, none of which I'd ever dare to repeat. Simon took the threats quite literally, as intoxicated as he was – as we all were. He pulled out his pocketknife and began to brandish it at Edward. 'Back off,' he said. 'Back off or I'll cut your throat.' He was waving it and Edward snatched it away from him. Simon lunged to get it back, and Edward looked frightened. He leapt back and slashed at Simon, catching him across the shoulder. Simon clutched at it and staggered back, but it wasn't very serious. He took the knife back and said he didn't know anything about our shares being cut, and after this, he wasn't sure he cared. Then he turned and went back towards the woods and that was the last we saw of him."

John was shaking his head. "But someone slipped poison into his drink. If it wasn't you or Edward, then who was it? Leslie?"

"It wasn't Leslie, or Patrick. We had specifically planned not to hurt Simon. We only wanted our money. No one was ever supposed to get hurt."

"So you didn't kill Mr. Camberwell, either?" I asked, feeling quite confused about the whole state of affairs.

Victor's head jerked in my direction. "Wait, Mr. Camberwell's dead too?"

"Mr. Hughes, what exactly was Leslie doing when you killed him, and what is Mr. Donnelly's – Patrick's – part in all of this?" Holmes asked, his face a blank slate, giving no indication as to the emotions underneath the surface.

"I did not kill him, Mr. Holmes! I swear to you! It was the four of us – Leslie, Patrick, Edward, and myself – who were planning this thing. Before Edward sent us the message, we had no idea that Simon was dead. Edward coming here in response to Nicole's letter was the perfect excuse for him to confront Mr. Camberwell himself about the money. Hold on, you can't be insinuating that the confrontation went south and Edward killed him!"

"No one is insinuating anything, Mr. Hughes," Holmes reassured him.

"Edward couldn't have killed him," I said, shaking my head. "Mr. Camberwell was poisoned, the same as Simon and Edward. If Edward did not kill Simon, then he most certainly would not have killed Mr. Camberwell in the same manner."

"And for that matter," Andrew added, "If Simon and Mr. Camberwell were killed concerning this, then who killed Edward?"

Holmes held up a hand. "One matter at a time. Mr. Hughes, please continue with your story."

"When Nicole wrote Edward that Simon was dead, he immediately wrote the rest of us. He was panicked. He thought that he was inadvertently responsible. By the time we received word, he had dropped everything to come here, and we followed, only hoping that he would remember on his own to speak to Mr. Camberwell."

"Victor, by the time Edward arrived, my father was already dead. He died the same day we found Simon's body. Edward arrived as we were burying the both of them in the family plot behind the house."

Victor shook his head. "This doesn't make any sense. If Edward didn't resolve the situation with Mr. Camberwell, then where did the money come from?"

" _All in due time, Mr. Hughes,"_ said Holmes slowly and firmly. "What was Mr. Godwin doing in the mines? Why did he need to be killed?"

"If Edward couldn't get the money back, he was just going to take what was rightfully ours, and we would divide it between ourselves. Leslie backed out. He said the risks of being caught were too much. If we were caught and turned in, not only would we be jailed, but we'd get nothing. I suppose with Mr. Camberwell dead, that's the case anyway. Edward was supposed to meet us in the mines to divide the money. Leslie, Patrick, and myself were waiting there for him. While we were waiting, Leslie told us that he couldn't handle it. He said that if we went through with it, he would turn us in, in hopes that they would give him a deal. Patrick pulled out his knife and stabbed him. Leslie drug himself down the passage aways before collapsing. I wanted no part of it, not now that there was murder involved. I tried to leave through the closest entrance, but I heard voices coming through the trees. That would be you and your friends, Nicole. I knew that I couldn't leave without crossing your path, so I turned around and went to warn Patrick that he needed to stash Leslie's body and run. We waited until you were at the main entrance, then I slipped out through the other side – the side you three must have exited through. Patrick was to cause a distraction and then run."

"A distraction?" Andrew interjected. " _A distraction?_ He set off dynamite and blocked the entrance!"

Victor looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Yes, well…I had no part in that decision. After he escaped being discovered, we met outside, on the path to the town. He said that I had made the decision to be involved, and I couldn't back out or what happened to Leslie would happen to me as well. We waited until you came out and headed back towards the house, and we went in the retrieve the body. We didn't expect you to come back, and not with…assistance. I covered the outside – I was the one who followed you out into the woods – while Patrick stood ground against the others inside. I assume that would be you three?" He looked up at Holmes, John, and Lestrade, who looked back at him with cold expressions.

"Continue, Mr. Hughes," Holmes prompted for the third time, his voice slightly weary.

"I don't know where Patrick is. I can only assume that he retreated with the body."

"Mr. Hughes, why are you telling us all this?" John asked. "Why come here and confess? Why not run?"

"Edward never showed up with the money. I'm not an idiot. I knew that Patrick would somehow be caught for Leslie's murder, and I knew that naturally, as the only other member of the group, I would be suspected alongside him. It was obvious that Edward had either given up and turned us all in, that he'd made off with the money on his own, or that something had happened to him. I knew I wasn't getting any profit from any of those possibilities, so I decided it was best to come clean. My God, I didn't expect Edward to be dead too. What in God's name happened?"

"He was poisoned," answered Lestrade. "The same as Mr. Camberwell and his son. Speaking of which, Holmes, how in God's name do you presume to explain that?"

Holmes' eyes glinted, and he held up a finger. "I think it quite obvious that Mr. Jamison was planning to run with the money. It was concealed in his suitcase, and not just in stacks, as it would have been if he had been planning to meet his confederates at all, but inside the backs of paintings, for an extra layer of protection. If someone had happened to see the contents of his suitcase, he could simply pose as an art dealer heading for London or another metropolis instead of having to explain away thousands of pounds in Bank of England notes."

John groaned under his breath. "Holmes, this is all very well and good, but why was he killed? Why were any of them killed?"

"Patience is a virtue, Watson! It is quite plain if you take a closer look at these notes. Do you see the loops on the G?" He held up one of the stacks for our inspection. "Last year, the Bank made a series of changes, including changing the structure of the lettering completely. Only, these notes are dated _this year._ "

"They're counterfeit," Andrew breathed.

"Precisely! Whomever printed these notes inked in a current date to explain the fresh texture and make it seem as if it hadn't been in circulation for long, but they printed the rest of it using old plates."

"But couldn't Mr. Camberwell have already had the notes, not knowing they were counterfeit?" Lestrade asked, furrowing his brow.

Nicole shook her head. "No, my father always took the receipts from his profits to the bank two towns over and had them print the money. If this was money he was withholding from the others, it would have come directly from there."

Holmes nodded, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "The scratches which were already on the back of the watch have two distinct groove patterns. One is obviously from when Mr. Jamison first removed the casement to conceal the key to the suitcase. But the other? From whence did it come? Mr. Jamison attempted to shield this key until his dying breath. It stands to reason that he knew someone was after the money, which at this stage could not have been counterfeit."

"So someone pried off the cover on the watch to remove the key after his death," Victor concluded. "Then they took out the money and replaced it with counterfeit. But why? Why go to all that trouble, and why kill for the money when it could have simply been stolen in the first place?"

"To make it seem like all of it was part of the same scheme," I said automatically. "That way the culprit could escape with the money while we wasted time trying to pin it on Simon's remaining friends."

"Which means they could very well be long gone by now," Lestrade growled, murmuring a few expletives and kicking at the bedpost in frustration.

Holmes looked decidedly bitter at this, but he held up a finger. "We do still have an arrest to make, for the murder of Leslie Godwin. Mr. Hughes, do you have any idea where Patrick Donnelly might be?"

Victor averted his eyes for a moment, tapping his foot on the floor as he thought. "Our plan was to take the body back to the mine entrance and throw into the unused shaft. The smell of the ores would mask the decay, and they'd never find it as long as that shaft remained abandoned. After that we would gather our things from our room at the inn in town and leave. We didn't have enough time to worry about finding Edward and the money anymore. If he's anywhere, it'll be the inn."

* * *

It took a while to find the coachman, and to persuade him to drive our company into town. Lestrade and Victor even had to sit on the back ledge, reserved normally for luggage. But finally, we arrived in front of the Rosedale Abbey Inn, a shabby little wooden structure that looked as if it had been erected solely for the purpose of the town having an "Inn," instead of actually being for frequent use. I doubted that this dusty, foul-smelling mining town was a popular holiday destination.

"Good evening, Mrs. Doonesbury," said Victor loudly to the old woman who was snoozing in a threadbare armchair inside the inn. Her face was heavily wrinkled and browned with age, so riddled with warts that at first glance she might appear to be a gnarled tree.

She started slightly at his voice and awoke. Sighting Victor, her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth in a crooked, rotting smile.

"Might I have the spare key to our room?" Victor asked in the same loud, precise voice. "I seem to have misplaced mine, and Mr. Donnelly might not be there."

Mrs. Doonesbury nodded and pulled herself to her feet, holding up a finger as she shuffled off into another room. She returned a moment later bearing a worn and dusty key, which had the number 3 messily etched onto it.

"Thank you, Mrs. Doonesbury," said Victor, taking the key and giving her a slight bow. He then turned to us. "All right, let's see if he's here. You'll all need to stay behind me as I open the door, so he doesn't try to run."

Holmes nodded, and Lestrade hesitated a moment, but eventually gave in, resting his hand on his revolver as we ascended the narrow, rickety staircase in single file.

Victor stopped in front of the third door and tried the doorknob. It didn't turn and he cursed under his breath, raising his fist to rap sharply. "Patrick? It's Victor. Are you in there?"

No answer came and Victor inserted the key, turning it and opening the door slowly. "My God!" he exclaimed upon entering the room, and Holmes, John, and Lestrade followed, hands poised to draw their weapons, the rest of us close behind.

A man I could only assume to be Patrick lay on the floor, brow beaded with sweat and eyes glazed over in fever, his arms and legs twitching sporadically. A bottle of whiskey lay spilt on the table in the corner. Blood was crusted on the shoulder of his shirt. As John quickly knelt down beside him to check his breathing and pulse, I needed no help in deciphering the scene before us. Patrick had been the one shot in the mines. He disposed of the body and returned here to tend to his wound as best he could. He drank the bottle of whiskey to dull the pain, but it must have been poisoned, and it took effect before he could do anything.

"Watson, is there anything you can do for him?" Holmes asked urgently, bending down beside my brother to assess the damage.

John looked into Holmes' eyes desperately. "No, nothing," he said breathlessly. "He's already deep in the throes of the toxin. There's not enough time to search out an antidote. He's as good as gone."

Indeed, almost as he spoke these words, Patrick Donnelly's rapid breathing grew slower and more shallow, almost rasping, and finally it stopped altogether. His limbs stopped twitching and his head fell limply to the side, bleeding slightly from the mouth.

Nicole's hands flew to cover her mouth, and she buried her face in my shoulder to shield herself from the sight. Andrew's hand grasped mine, and with my free hand I reached to soothe her, although I was myself numb with horror.

John's head drooped visibly in respect for the newly dead as he closed Patrick's eyes and placed the limp hands over his chest. Holmes straightened up and ran a hand over his face. I knew that he was liable to blame himself for a death he could have prevented had he only acted sooner. We all were. To strive for perfection was a human instinct, and not one that Holmes took lightly.

He paced around the room in brooding silence for a moment, before turning to Victor, the rest of us hushed. "Mr. Hughes, whoever is responsible for this is tying up their loose ends. You are the only loose end remaining. We will be returning to London first thing in the morning. You will not leave our sight, is this understood? Inspector Lestrade will place you under arrest for conspiracy to commit theft and murder. You will return to London with us, where the inspector will file a warrant for your official custody until this is sorted out."

Victor nodded, visibly shaken. "Who could be doing this?" He asked in a hushed voice.

"I cannot say at this juncture," replied Holmes, "but I promise we will do everything in our power to follow where truth may lead."

Following this, Holmes took a look around the room, seeming to come to the same conclusion as I had. By this time my adrenalin was beginning to wear off, and I could tell that Nicole's was too. John was not oblivious to this fact, and he urged Andrew to escort us back to the Abbey to get some rest before the morning's trip.

The ride back to the house was very quiet, the only sound the shuffling of our feet on the floor of the coach. When we arrived, Andrew softly thanked the coachman and ushered Nicole and I up the steps to the doors.

Halfway up, when Nicole was a little ways ahead of us, I stopped and grabbed Andrew's arm. "Andrew, the loose ends, the deaths. Something feels dreadfully familiar about this. You don't think –"

Andrew looked into my eyes and sighed deeply. "Emily, this is the path of any killer who wants to leave himself undetected, not just Moriarty. If you doubt this, I'm sure Holmes can tell you, in all his years of working cases, not everything is connected to some darker conspiracy. Now come on, let's all go inside and get some rest."

He took my hand and led me up the remainder of the steps, and I sighed. Perhaps he was right. It was completely illogical that Moriarty could be behind this as well. He had no plausible connections to it, and tying up loose ends was not a factor unique to his dealings. Yet, as Andrew held open the large door for me, and I took another look back at the dark trees in the distance, I could not help but picture more sinister forces, working underground to capture what otherwise might not have been theirs. A chill crept down my spine as Andrew placed a hand on my shoulder, and I turned and entered the house.


	18. Epilogue

_A/N: Well, this is it! The epilogue! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for book 3: **Ex Inferno**_ _. Enjoy, and keep your eyes peeled! - Ell_

* * *

Epilogue

* * *

The next morning, as the sun was just rising over the trees outside, letting solitary rays of light filter through the lawn, our company stood in the entryway of Rosedale Abbey, watching as the coachman carried our stacks of luggage out to the waiting carriage.

Victor's hands were cuffed together in front of him, and Lestrade stood to the side, talking to Andrew quietly. I understood Lestrade's motivations for the cuffs on Victor, although I had a feeling that Victor knew what a foolish idea it would be to run from the only men who were currently offering him protection from whomever might be after him.

 _Moriarty,_ whispered a voice in the back of my head. _Moriarty is after him._ No. Absolutely not. I took a deep breath and cleansed my thoughts. It wasn't him. There was no reason for it to be.

I turned to Nicole. "Will you be all right?" I asked her. "Is there anyone besides the staff here who could come stay with you?"

She took a breath and nodded. "Actually, that brings me to this." She pulled a pristinely addressed envelope from her pocket. "Will you take this to London and mail it for me? I have an older sister, Lucy. She's currently studying abroad in America. This is a letter alerting her of the events and requesting her presence back at home." She pressed the envelope into my hand, her genuine eyes meeting mine in an expression of trust.

I placed my hand on top of hers, and gave a small smile. "I will. Stay safe, please."

She gave me a quick embrace, as we observed that the others were deliberately moving towards the doors. "I shall. Goodbye, Emily."

I took another look at her and smiled as we pulled apart and I slipped my hand into Andrew's and walked away.

* * *

On the train back to London, we separated into two compartments. Lestrade, Victor, and John took one, while Holmes, Andrew, and I took another. It wasn't as if we couldn't have all had our own compartments. Indeed, we were the only ones on the train. I doubted it even would have run had we not showed up at the station.

After quite a while of sitting in silence, Andrew made a small grunting noise and stood, looking down at me. "I'm going to step out and stretch my legs, would you like to come?"

I looked up, a little startled by the sudden words. "All right," I replied, taking his hand and pulling myself to my feet.

As I followed him out of the compartment, feeling the rumble of the wheels on the tracks beneath me, I could sense Holmes' eyes on me, and I knew exactly what they were saying. _Are you going to tell him?_ I straightened my shoulders and ignored it.

There were sets of windows across the corridor outside the compartment, and we wandered down the hall a little ways, silent, but grateful for the ability to stretch our cramped legs.

We stopped at one of the windows and stood there, looking out at the barren landscape as it sped by, watching it as it grew steadily greener as we progressed south. After a few moments of this, Andrew spoke. "Did you see me talking to Lestrade before we left?"

I broke my gaze out the window and looked up at him. "As a matter of fact, I did. What was that about?"

He sighed. "He had received word that my father stepped down as Commissioner."

I inhaled sharply in surprise. "What? Why? Did something happen?"

Andrew gave me a small smile. "Nothing of scandalous or ruining proportions, if that's what you're thinking. Actually, he was offered a better position. As an advisor to the Home Secretary."

"That's fantastic," I replied, breathless. "But what's going to happen to you? You won't still be able to spend your days at the Yard, am I right?"

"Well, I've been considering it for some time," he said after a moment, taking a cleansing breath. "I'm going to pursue a career as an officer. It may not play out right away, but that's all right. I just know that's what I want to do. I've already come close enough."

"How long will it be before a new Commissioner is appointed?"

"According to Lestrade, one is already being considered. He has only to accept the offer."

"I'm very happy for you," I replied. "Both of you." I placed my hand on top of his. As I shifted, I felt a weight in my pocket, and sucked in a breath in confusion. What on earth could that be?

"Well, I think I'm going to sit back down," said Andrew after another moment.

"You go on," I told him softly. "I'll be there in a moment."

He nodded and set off back down the corridor.

Once he was out of sight, I dug into my pocket and pulled out the object. It was the ivory handled knife I'd found in the forest the night before. I turned it over with bated breath and peered at the initials. _S.M._ What on earth could _S.M._ stand for? I knew of no one with those initials, certainly none who had been involved with this case.

I leaned against the wall, staring out the window, willing myself to think of someone with those initials. I could not, and I returned to our compartment. I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes, trying to relax my brain, and eventually I drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When I awoke with a start, the scenery outside the window was growing more urban by the minute. It was clear that we were growing close to the city limits of London.

I tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear, struggling to remember the details of my dream. Or was it completely a dream?

It had taken place when I had been kidnapped by Moriarty, the evening he had requested my presence for dinner. As I entered the room, my escort by my side, Moriarty and another man were whispering urgently to each other. Before they looked up, I could make out a name. Sebastian Moran. _S.M._

* * *

The next day, back in the Baker Street rooms, I was reading an old monograph of Holmes', _A Study of Deciduous Trees in Britain,_ as John sat at his desk, scribbling away at a stack of papers. Holmes entered, returning from Mrs. Hudson's call that there was post waiting downstairs, and peered over John's shoulder. "What have we here, Watson?"

"It's nothing, Holmes," John assured him, looking rather flustered.

"Nonsense! What's this?" Holmes picked up a sheet of paper to the side of the tall stack. " _A Study In Scarlet, Being a Reprint From the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department._ A memoir of the Jefferson Hope case! How fantastically lurid, Watson." He slapped the paper back onto the desk and flopped melodramatically into his arm chair to open the mail.

I set aside the monograph and took a sip of my tea, stretching on the sofa and staring into the crackling embers of the fireplace, emanating warmth to protect us from the frigid winds outside.

John was once again deeply engrossed in his writing by the time Holmes reached a short missive that made him stop and murmur "By God!"

"What is it?" I asked him, setting down my tea cup and looking up.

"It's a note from Lestrade. Victor Hughes was found dead in his cell this morning. It appears that he hung himself."

My eyes widened, startled. "Do you believe that report?"

He set the letter aside, leaning forward and steepling his fingers gravely. "Not even a little."

* * *

Later that afternoon, I donned my cloak and set off for the post office to postmark the letter Nicole had asked me to send to her sister in America. As I was leaving the post office on Wigmore Street, a stack of newspapers on the ground caught my attention. It had undoubtedly been abandoned by some newsboy who had found something better to do with his time. I bent down to pick one up, staring at the headline which had sparked my interest.

 _Highly Acclaimed Professor Purchases Yorkshire Mine._

No. Surely not. I skimmed the article, hoping against hope.

… _a celebrity in the scientific community, Professor James Moriarty, formerly of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, announced last night his purchase of a mine in North Yorkshire, previously owned by the late Oliver Camberwell. Having recently come into a great sum of money, Professor Moriarty made a wise and deliberate move to purchase the rights and funding to a mine which would otherwise have been condemned by the government in a matter of days, surely a welcome prospect to the surrounding community of Rosedale Abbey and the dozens of people who have made working the mine their choice of labor._

Suddenly breathless, I dropped the paper back on the ground and walked briskly away, aware of an all too familiar shabbily dressed man with a dark and weathered face watching me from a few yards away. I caught a glimpse of his face in the reflection of the post office window. It was the same man whom I had seen through the trees the day of the funeral at the Camberwell's, and suddenly I remembered all too well where I had seen him before. He had been the one hiding in Nicole's room, the night I had been knocked unconscious with chloroform. I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from him as I could as it dawned on me with sickening clarity who he was.

One thing was for sure. The name _Sebastian Moran_ fit him very well, and I repressed a shudder as I picked up my pace, hoping desperately that he would not follow me.

Perhaps Andrew was wrong after all. It was the suggestion of many philosophers that there was a deeper, hidden meaning behind everything that happens in our lives. Some unseen force constantly shadowing us, manipulating our every move. Whether this force's name was Fate or Moriarty remained to be seen.


End file.
